Agent Potter, Section 31
by uNople
Summary: ABANDONED - What would happen if the wizarding world was a part of the Star Trek universe? The crew of Voyager is about to find out, as Harry Potter is a part of their crew, and the wizards are about to reveal themselves to the universe.
1. Chapter 1

"Mr Paris, take us in," Captain Katherine Janeway ordered, the vibrant chaos and energy twisters of the Badlands taking up the entire viewscreen.

The Starship Voyager, crew complement 150, was the Federation's latest long term exploration vessel. Created as a means to explore quadrants of the galaxy never before seen, it was Starfleet's premiere vehicle of exploration.

Starfleet had been sending probes around the Cardassian-Federation border. Tensions were high as the border dispute ramped up. Unlike the Cardassians, the Federation refused to give up territories that were already colonised by their citizens.

It just wasn't done.

Because of this, Cardassian separatists had been using the badlands in order to strike at the territories around the border. The Federation had been sending probes into that area when one of them got thrown 70,000 light years into the Delta quadrant, probed, then sent back.

Starfleet was intrigued. This could be their chance to expand their knowledge into never before seen star systems and gain technology to help in the cold war with the Cardassians, and the looming threat of the Dominion.

It was on this mission that Harry Potter was assigned. Harry had lived a long life, all 500 years of it. He was part of the initial Federation charter, and wizard kind was too. They were the elusive Section 31 that operated in the shadows.

As humans discovered the existance of aliens, the wizarding world banded together and acted quickly, spelling all world leaders and people in the know to secrecy. The Mages established themselves as the hidden power behind the Federation in the same way as they were the hidden power behind the normal governments. Millennia of hiding had taught them how to do so, and how to remain a myth that nobody could prove.

Harry Potter found that with becoming the master of death, and the defeater of Voldemort, came immortality and power beyond imagining. When Voldemort died his power and knowledge became Harry's in a sort of quickening. No wizard before or since has been as powerful.

Harry was Section 31's poster boy, the immortal mage. He was who they sent on their most important missions, and this was the most important by far. He's been assigned as the first officer to the Starship Voyager in order to ensure the acquisition of technologies to help the Federation.

Voyager's primary mission is to follow their probe into the Delta quadrant, investigate what brought them there, and to make new alliances and gain any technology they can get their hands on.

As Tom Paris, Voyager's helmsman, deftly maneuvered the ship around the eddy's the captain stood up.

"Take us into quadrant 3b Mr. Paris, that was the last known location of the probe,"

Ensign Harry Kim called out from the ops station "We have a gravitic wave coming from 100km out."

"Red Alert. All hands to emergency posts. Seal off all emergency bulkheads and shields to maximum" Commander Chakotay ordered.

"Captain, readings show this is the same wave and same vector that took our probe," operative Potter yelled over the red alert. "I recommend full speed to take some of the stresses out."

"Make it so, Tom," the helmsman complied and Voyager jumped to full impulse before the wave hit them.

The ship shook as it and the crew were hurled towards the delta quadrant at a high speed, exceeding the vaunted warp 10 the federation were heading towards.

Plasma conduits exploded all over the ship as the stresses on the hull overloaded shield systems. People were thrown around as Voyager rocketed through space.

With a tearing sound, it stopped. "Damage report," captain Janeway ordered.

"Hull breaches on decks 10, 11, and 12. Weapons offline. Shields down to 20 percent. Casualties reporting to sick bay," Lieutenant Tuvok stated calmly.

"Captain, we are in front of the array seen by the probe," Potter reported.

"Your mission is a go then Potter."

Harry left his station and headed towards the turbolift. After a small journey he headed for the operations lab, this was the base for all wizards on board. Potter sat down at the computer terminal, attempting to hack into the alien's communications network. After a while he stood up with a stormy look on his face and stomped over to the ring in the center of the room.

He stepped into ring and disappeared in a swirl.

Harry reappeared in a cold, steel room. From his scans he knew the entity was on the far side of the station. Hooking into a control port, he connected his personal computer and told it to download the alien database.

The computer was a blending of technology and magic. Like all Wizarding technologies it was larger on the inside, allowing them to fit much more inside of it. It also contained runes meant to compress time, so the processing speed was faster than mostly everything else. Harry's was unique though, because it contained a watered down version of his consciousness.

Harry looked at the display output of his personal computer, and a frown slowly etched itself on his face. "No way," he muttered as he typed in a command.

He disappeared with the swirl of transporter vortex, and reappeared in what looked like a medical experimentation room. All of Voyager's crew lined the edges of the room, lying asleep on medical beds. Their clothes were gone, nowhere to be seen.

Harry hurried to the computer terminal in the room, plugging his device in and quickly getting to the reason for the apparent kidnapping of the ship's crew. What he found made him angry. It looked like the entity was called the Caretaker, and he was looking for a mate because he was dying.

Harry tapped his communicator, "Harry to Joe, come in."

"I figured you wouldn't be caught up in what got the crew Harry," the holographic doctor said, pleased at this development. "The crew disappeared from the ship minutes ago, and my sensor readings show they are on the alien space station."

"Thanks for the info buddy," Harry replied. "It looks like the caretaker is dying and is trying to find a mate which is why he's bringing in ships from all over. I'm sending you all of his medical records now."

"Readings received, processing…" Harry waited, looking over the data from the caretaker's array. "Yes, it looks like I can cure him. He has an acute form of radiation poisoning," the doctor stated.

"Ok, beam to the alien's coordinates and I'll apparate over. Harry out."

With that, Harry's body compressed down into a pinpoint as his magic opened up a miniscule wormhole for him to travel through.

With a pop Harry appeared next to the entity known as the Caretaker, the doctor arriving just after him in the telltale swirl of the transporter.

The old man in the barn jumped in surprise as he whirled around to face them. "How did you get here? I thought I got everyone on your ship."

"You did, the Doctor is a holographic life form, and I was already on your station," Harry explained, as Joe pulled out his medical tricorder and started scanning the alien.

"Well? What are you doing then? Why aren't you attacking me? I'm presuming you're here for your crew?" The Caretaker blustered as the Doctor stopped his scans and sat his medical container on the floor.

"We hacked into your database and found the reason you abduct beings from across the galaxy," Agent Potter stated, as the caretaker looked away in shame. "We know all about you and your partner ruining the Ocampan's planet and only you staying behind," the caretaker's head whipped around as he stared incredulously at Harry. "We know about the radiation poisoning that happened when you tried saving the planet... And we also know you are looking for a mate or someone to replace you."

"What we don't know is why you didn't ask for help," The doctor took over talking as he pulled out a hypospray from his medkit and held it up to the being for inspection. "This is a cure for your radiation poisoning. If you take this cure there's plenty of time for you to find a replacement caretaker, or to find a mate in a more traditional sense. We could even help you with that. Our organisation - the United Federation of Planets - is a multicultural array of beings. Our medicines can deal with incompatibility between species and solve it in quite a few cases. We could help you look after your people. What do you say, will you let us help you?"

The caretaker sighed. Reality around the three of them shimmered as the Sporocystian lifeform disabled the holographic fields. Once disabled the three of them were in a sparse room. Equipment lined the outside and the caretaker was in the center of the room, a sphere-ish crystalline entity tinged in neon blues, with a darkened brown center.

"Your crew has been transported back to their ship. I will take this cure now and enter into talks with your federation," The caretaker said as he moved forward towards the doctor. Joe injected the being with the hypospray, and the form shimmered as the brown center lightened to a vibrant blue, all signs of sickness gone. With that done, the caretaker's form was again replaced with that of the old man, looking more alive this time, standing under his own power once more.

"Thank you," he said simply. "In my mind, what I was doing was right for the Ocampa; I didn't consider asking for help or even think about whether taking a mate was right. I failed to make my partner see the error of her ways when we poisoned the planet with our method of travel between galaxies, and I've been alone for so long that I forgot what it was like to have others I could rely on."

"Janeway to Potter, come in," Harry's comm badge cracked into life.

Harry tapped on his comm badge, "Potter here, go ahead."

"What's going on over there? We were all transported over and then back from the array, do you know what happened?"

"Yes, we have someone here who is best placed to explain - that is if you would like to come and tell your story?" Harry asked the creature.

"Yes, I will come."

With that, the caretaker and the senior staff entered into talks. The caretaker told them of his history, of being a Nacene - a Sporocystian lifeform, and of the Ocampan people who he had looked after for so long. Him having a partner, another Nacene called Suspiria, and how their travel into the delta quadrant irradiated the Ocampan's planet, and how he tried to stop it and got his fatal poisoning.

He sent them underground, and provided technology and energy enough to survive. He told them of searching for a mate, or a successor who would look after the Ocampan people who only lived a short 10 years, and were a childlike people, not understanding the dangers of what was out there.

They had people who were curious and who wanted to see the outside world and explore the galaxy instead of being confined. It was those who the Caretaker was concerned about now. For assistance to defend the Ocampa from the Kazons and other threats, and the potential meeting of a successor for when he dies, the Caretaker gave Starfleet the quantum displacement technology to get ships from one point to another point a great distance away, with the proviso that they only used this between two fixed points, otherwise it could cause another disaster in the same way as on the Ocampan planet.

Voyager stayed in the system for another 6 months to assist the Caretaker, and to shore up the defenses on the Ocampan sub-planet settlement. While there, they agreed to take onboard five Ocampans and one Talaxian, all led by a young woman called Kes. They made up part of Voyager's growing Science department. The new orders from Starfleet were received. Voyager was ordered to use the caretaker's array as a base of operations in the delta quadrant to explore and expand the frontier of knowledge for the Federation.

It was a two year mission to discover as much as they could of the Delta quadrant. Along the way they would build a network of displacement stations and communication buoys to facilitate faster travel in this quadrant in the future.

As for Section 31, Harry received new orders as well. The wizarding world was spread out enough across multiple worlds, and now multiple quadrants to ensure their survival. With the new method of faster travel they had a backup plan if anything went wrong. They were going to trial revealing themselves to a small number of the crew to gauge their reactions and see if the prejudice that threw them into hiding millennia ago had vanished. That crew is voyager.

These are the stories of her continuing mission. To explore the delta quadrant, to find new life, new civilizations, and new technologies. To engage in trade and friendship with other species, and to boldly go where no-one has gone before.


	2. Chapter 2

With a flash of her warp engines, Voyager started the long journey into the Delta quadrant. On the bridge, the air was that of excitement. They had been patrolling the Ocampan system for the last six months, and the crew was anxious to be out exploring.

The destination planet for their first mission, was one from the joint federation and caretaker database. The planet was deemed to have life, possibly a pre-warp civilization which had some interesting energy readings.

Harry walked into the mess hall and looked around. He saw Tom and Harry Kim at a table eating and walked up to them. "Hey guys, What's good on the menu today?" he asked.

"I'm having tomato soup," Tom said. "Neelix has outdone himself today, it has some sort of spice in it that's out of this world."

Harry K smiled and poked Tom in the ribs. "Everything's out of this world, we're in space!"

"OK you two, wait right there," Potter chuckled as he walked off to get his food.

"Hey Neelix, Chell," Harry greeted the two voyager Chefs. "I hear the tomato soup is good."

"Yes, I took the liberty of changing it up with some Talaxian spices," Neelix proudly said.

Harry smiled amusedly, "And how are you liking your new assignment, crewman Chell?" he asked the blue Bolian.

"I'm enjoying it. I came into Starfleet to try and push real food back into the limelight, none of this bland replicated crap," he said passionately. "I'm just glad we have to save power for our mission out here so we have to cut down on replicator use."

"I'm must say, I'm enjoying it," harry said. "I grew up on real food, and while the replicator does make good approximations of food, I don't find it's anywhere near as good as real food. Well, the tomato soup does look good so I'll leave you both to it."

With that Harry carried his soup back to the table with Harry Kim and Tom in it. As he sat down, he got accosted by Harry Kim. "So, Harry, what's it like working for Starfleet intelligence? I've heard you have to train for over 5 years after your starfleet training just to get considered."

"I'm normally not allowed to say Ensign," Harry said as he sipped his soup "But the classification guidelines _have_ been lifted a little for the duration of our mission. I'm -"

The ship shuddered causing all conversation in the mess hall to quieten. After a second or two, the crew began rushing to their duty stations. Harry, Harry and Tom made their way towards the main turbolift that was reserved for bridge officers. "All crew report to your duty stations," the captain's voice rang out over the comm. As he thumbed the button to open the turbolift Harry quipped "It's not like we didn't know we should go to our duty stations!" The other two chuckled as they followed Harry into the turbolift.

As they entered the bridge, Captain Janeway looked up from her computer readout. "Gentlemen, take your stations" she ordered.

As Ensign Kim got to his duty station, he looked at the readings. "Captain, it looks like we crashed through something," He said. "But there's no sensor data on what that something is."

"Thank you, Ensign," Janeway said. "Put us on our previous course Lieutenant Paris."

Harry looked over the sensor readings as the ship zoomed away from the point of impact with the unknown object, and knew something was wrong. He reached out with his aura and began to 'feel' the interdimensional energy around them. He pulled his aura back as he knew where Voyager was, and started searching frantically through the database for the last time this had been recorded. "Captain, I think we should come to an all-stop," he said as he sent the mission reports to her console. "As you can see, with these reports a starship came across this phenomenon a hundred years ago, and we lost the whole crew. It was pure luck we found them afterwards and were able to analyze their sensor readings."

"So what are we looking at Harry?" Commander Chakotay asked.

"We're looking at Voyager being trapped inside a quantum singularity. That shudder we felt before was the ship penetrating the event horizon and getting trapped inside. I suggest that we backtrack to find the entrance."

Ensign kim piped up, "I've found our warp trail readings and have fed them into your con station Tom."

"Following the course now," Paris said as he used the navigational data to follow Voyager's previous trail.

After a few minutes of following the warp trail they detected the opening and also a ship near the opening of the singularity.

"Hail them, Ensign," Kathryn ordered. The channel open sound beeped. "This is captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager. You are trapped inside a quantum singularity. Do you require assistance?"

After a moment or two they received a reply. "thi... cap…way...ship.. ger...ass…"

"Can we clear up the reply?" The Captain asked Ensign Kim. "Attempting now," He said as he typed in commands on his console. The message played back and was slightly less garbled than before.

"Lieutenant Torres, what do you think?" Janeway asked.

"If I work with Commander Potter I believe we can set up a localised dampening field around the sensor array," the human-klingon hybrid said.

"Go ahead," the captain said, and the two started working, crowding around B'elanna's console conversing away with techno babble.

After a few minutes Harry signalled to ensign Kim to try again, and as they listened they heard the captain's initial hail.

"Ensign Kim, can you magnify that ship on screen now," Harry asked, looking towards the main viewer. He watched as Voyager came into focus, with a large purple and blue pulsating rip in space next to it.

"Captain, we have to get out of here now," he said as the screen showed the rift closing.

Harry threw himself at the seat of his console, fingers flying over the screen as he furiously typed. "Tom, I'm sending you coordinates now," he said urgently.

"B'elanna, modify the shields to the following modulation and expand the coverage to make the front pointed," as Voyager rushed towards the opening.

From outside the anomaly, in normal space Voyager burst into existence, the shield shimmering angrily. The nose of the shield, normally spherical, glowing like it was suffering from reentry.

Inside the ship it was finally calm again.

"All readings good Captain, we are back in normal space," Ensign Kim stated as the bridge sighed in relief.

Curious eyes now point to agent Potter as he furiously typed away on his console. "Captain, I am releasing a probe to warn people about the anomaly. It will scan the singularity to find the borders and embed itself in the nearest system's star using the shields that enterprise D was able to test when hiding from the Borg within another star. If detected it will self-destruct."

Captain Janeway nodded, lips set together as she regarded Harry in another light.

"Captain, I also need to request a meeting with the senior staff at a suitable time to discuss this. As of this moment you are all sectioned under special order 31 and you cannot discuss this with anyone nor enter this into the ship's logs. I'm sorry Captain," Harry said, looking right at her with his piercing green eyes, "But I'm under orders here which I will explain to you and the senior staff." He looked around the bridge, feeling gazes ranging from cool (Tuvok) to incredulous (Kim) to impressed (Paris). The captain and Chakotay looked at him as if under a new light, sizing him up. B'elanna just looked amused at the whole thing.

"Captain, I need to leave to prepare for this meeting. Permission to depart from the bridge," Harry stated formally, looking at Kathryn.

"Permission granted."

With that, he exited the bridge and headed for his lab.

o~o~o

Later that day...

"Thank you all for coming" Harry said while looking around at the senior staff in the meeting room.

"I'm sure you are wondering about special order 31 and the repercussions. I know many of you looked this order up only to find that the contents of the order itself is classified. I know it's a little unorthodox but I'd like for you all to tell me what you know before I get to explaining."

"From what I heard," Tom said as he leaned forward conspiratorially. "Order 31 only happens when interesting things start happening. It's used to keep captains and crews quiet about new and exciting technologies and information coming to light."

"That's similar to what I heard," Ensign Kim stated, "the rumors are that there's a secretive part of the federation, an organization behind the organization which runs everything. Nobody's been able to get a name though."

"I got a name, funnily enough where the order gets its number - it's from a department of the federation called Section 31," B'Elanna said, looking satisfied. "I also figured since you're asking Harry that you're not just part of starfleet intelligence then?"

"Are you a part of this rogue organization Agent Potter?" Captain Janeway asked, her face impassive. Chakotay looked on, curiously.

"Before I answer that, I need to let you know all of your clearance levels have been updated to Omega level," Harry said, sliding the pads that were in a neat pile in front of him to each member of the senior staff.

"Yes Captain, that includes _that_ information," He said as he saw the shocked expression on her face appear. "Although they won't get that particular information yet, they are cleared for it now"

"So what you have here in front of you is a basic rundown of Special Order 31. You won't be able to show anyone, you won't be able to interface the information on your padds to the computer systems, you won't even be able to take photos of it. It's protected by a very advanced AI which is also part of every system in Voyager. This has been done to protect this information. It can't get out until we are ready for it to."

"The organisation I work for is called Section 31. We have existed for well over a millennia in one form or another, and were there for the founding of the federation. We are there as the protective overwatch over the Federation, working to assist in expansion, wars and peace efforts as well as technology growth, espionage, anything really to help the federation remain stable and prosperous."

"My race of people started out on earth, in the same way as humans did. At some point in the evolutionary process a gene mutation caused the ability to access higher dimensions. Through this access comes powers and abilities. My kind were called wizards and witches. Now we are simply known as magicians. What we can do is similar to the Q - we shape the universe around us according to our wills."

"Perhaps a small demonstration is in order here," he said as he looked at the disbelieving faces around the table.

With no discernable movement or anything on Harry's part, the table started turning into a tree, its thin trunk providing no obstacle to the view of the changing room. Roots wove themselves around all of the chairs, and the tree grew towards the ceiling, hitting it and growing out towards the corners. Vines grew up the walls and flowers popped out intermittently. As leaves began to fall from the tree they turned into butterflies, and glowworms. water started to pool around the base of the tree and its mirror like surface reflected the new stars that were shown above the tree as the ceiling turned into nothingness.

"That is but a small fraction of what I can do," Harry smiled, looking around the room at his colleagues. "Doctor, hand the captain your medical tricorder." He ordered, and the Doctor passed her the object for her to open it and start scanning.

"Doctor, you've seen this before, what do you think of it this time?" Harry asked the doctor as new shock showed on the faces of the senior staff.

"Yes, thanks Harry" he said, smirking a little. "It was nice to see someone see this for the first time. My creator Lewis Zimmerman was a magician, so when was activated for the first time I got treated to a similar display from Harry here, but everything was new, not just magic. It's great to see this sort of thing again - I have a sort of limited magical ability but it's to do with spells, not _will applications_ like this."

"It's real!" Heads turned to the Captain as she looked amazed at the Tricorder the Doctor handed to her. "How can it be real?" She looked at Harry, amazed, and handed the tricorder around the room. There was silence from the staff as they took turns crowding around the tricorder, necks craning to see the readings.

"This is the purest form of magic, and the one that takes the longest to master. Around half of all magicians won't be able to do this, or will only be able to do a small part of it. Most can only do spells. There are a few which are magical but can't tap into the higher dimensions properly who can see magical places and wards, can use magical objects, but can do little magic themselves. Magic exists in a bell curve just like intelligence across normal humans."

"Also," Harry said, looking around, "Wizards can be born to non-wizarding families depending on their parent's genes - the mutation required for this is still happening in the human race, and is slowly happening more frequently. It's enough so that in a few hundred thousand years, all humans will be magical."

"That's quite a lot to take in, so I will take questions now. Oh, also before I forget. Normally you shouldn't be able to discuss this with people not in the know however there's been a breakthrough recently on the secrecy spell which we have to use a lot. It's placement on this ship means you can talk about this to each other and anyone who overhears conversations between you all will make up what you're saying in their heads."

"So, any questions?"

With that, the room exploded into noise.

o~o~o

Harry laughed, booming chuckles out of his lopsided grin as he regarded everyone "Ok, ok you can stop now!" he breathed out as the rest of them fell silent. "One at a time. Harry?"

"How could you do all of this? It defies the laws of physics?" he was almost hyperventilating "What are you?"

"I just told you Harry. I'm a wizard. As for how it's possible, I take the energy from higher planes of existence, like those the Q live on and even beyond, and use that to fabricate items, plants, beings and whatever with my will." Harry looked pensive, and his eyes unfocused.

"One thing that may help you understand is that the reason why a direct application of will is difficult for most wizards is because you're using your brain to make a pattern of matter that doesn't have a spell matrix already created. With a direct spell the spell matrix is already in the correct dimension, and it just needs a word, phrase or application of will to activate it. The wizard's power opens a small fissure allowing some energy to leak out of the higher dimension through the spell matrix which then performs the effect. Sort of like a computer algorithm."

"When using direct will you're not only opening the fissure, you're also creating the spell matrix or matrices in order to direct the energy into the correct form. In some cases this uses the energy to create matter, in others it uses energy to create movement. There are numerous applications. And depending on the wizard's control and power they can open greater and greater fissures and depending on their mind they can make more and more complicated spell matrices. It's why beings like the Q are so powerful, they have had milenina to perfect their control and increase their power."

"So just how powerful are you then? In comparison to the Q I mean?" B'Elanna asked, looking curiously at Harry with something akin to a pleased look on her face.

"I've never come up against one," Harry said, "so there's really no way to tell - however I definitely don't have their eons of experience, simply a measly 500 years."

That announcement caused the members of the room to look around at each other disbelievingly. "Harry," Chakotay started, "Your record stated you were only 28."

"Yeah, that's always necessary. Enter in code HarryPotterIs500 under my personnel file and you'll be able to see certain things like my unclassified service record which covers most of my life. Through the judicious use of charms to spell people to secrecy people don't question my service record always showing me as a 28 year prodigy. It makes it easier to get me onboard whichever ship or place I need to be for my assignments."

The senior staff all entered the code in on their padds, some of whom had their device passed back to them by a moving vine, turned into a hand.

After some moments of silence Tuvok looked up and frowned. "Agent Potter, it states here that your birth date is 1981, however it's currently 2371. That means you should only be 390. Why are you so much older?"

"Aah, that's what time travel does Tuvok" Harry laughed "Many years spent in time dilation or as part of the temporal bureau or just plain simple dimensional or time travel gave me a lot of extra years."

"Mr Potter," Captain Janeway looked up at him, "I don't understand why you ever told us this? From what you said there's no real reason to reveal this to us."

"Well it's quite simple Captain," the ancient mage said. "I was trying to keep a low profile here. After the caretaker was cured and we got the technology to travel vast distances my orders have changed. Once command realized that we could quite possibly explore both new quadrants - between us and Deep Space Nine - they ordered me to not keep as low of a profile."

"There's also the matter that three hundred and ninety years after my birth the wizards are finally ready to come out to the universe as a whole. There's been a lot of fear about this over the years, but given the Vulcan's mind magic and the Q and the galaxy's general acceptance - and the fact we have wizards everywhere now - they feel a little safer about coming out in the near future."

"What do you mean they have wizards everywhere?" Tom asked, pointing his padd at Harry.

"What I mean is that considering that education has been keeping the dark wizarding population down and there are checks and balances put in place with the wizarding leadership so that it can't get too corrupt there's been a population boom of massive proportions in the last few centuries. It's enough that we have wizarding colonies on every federation world. We have officers on every Starship, not through espionage or anything!" He said to their concerned looks "It's through them going through the academy like normal people. We wanted to reassure people we could do the same things as them, which includes service in Starfleet."

Here Harry looked at the staff, "I'm sure all of you think being in Starfleet is an excellent way of serving the Federation, and its citizens, that's all my people are doing is showing that we can serve in the same way as all of you."

"We have already come out to the Starfleet and Federation leadership which went well otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. They've said they'd like for some time to get the senior officers in starfleet, and local leaders and governments up to speed first before releasing this information to the rest of Starfleet and the Federation."

"What you've said is backed up by the information on this padd Agent," Captain Janeway said. "What I don't understand is why aren't you in a larger leadership position, like say the captain of this ship rather than its intelligence officer?"

"I have found through my long life that it's much better to be a leader of a small group rather than a large one Captain. Power corrupts, and i've taken out my fair share of Evil governments and individuals and that's just not the life for me." He ran his hand through his hair, looking right into Katherine's eyes. "There are a lot more reasons, such as it would be a lot more threatening if I was the captain of a ship coming out to you all rather than just another officer coming out to their crewmates."

"The position of leadership of a large group has never been my goal anyway. People have so much to offer. If I was a leader for my whole life then how would others be able to step up?"

He looked at Tuvok "Would it be logical to deny people the opportunity to be the best they can be? If I was always in charge everyone would get used to relying on me for help. That's fine in the short term, but in the long term it's not good - for them or for me."

"I understand your logic Agent" Tuvok stated. "If you however help us here in our mission won't we become reliant on you and your skills as well?"

"When I help I am training people, Tuvok. Section 31, the wizarding leadership has determined that the Ocampa are a people who have the ability to wield this power in the same way as we do, and they all have a lot of potential. I realized that when I saw the Ocampa for the first time, and the wizarding world have been helping them realize their powers over the last 6 months as we've been touring the system."

"With them, and other wizard agents on board, when I leave Voyager it will be with people capable of solving any of the problems I could. The wizarding world does know how to contact me if there's an emergency and nothing can be done to solve it - it's part of my job as a Hero to help people in need of course!" With that, Harry's eyes shone, and the others heard the determination in his voice.

"I think I'll leave it there if you don't mind," Harry said, and the forest in the room started to wilt and die, the leaves, branches and the butterflies falling to the ground and decomposing, all ending up as dust which swirled into the center of the room and turned back into the conference table.

"Ayala to the Captain," a male voice buzzed through the communicators. "We are approaching the system."

"On our way," Janeway stated, as the senior staff departed the conference room directly onto the bridge.

o~o~o

If you were orbiting the planet, you'd see a streak of light approach, and Voyager emerge from the lines of light as she dropped out of warp above the green and blue planet below.

"On screen," Kathryn ordered and Ensign Kim put the image of the planet up on the main viewer. It showed a mix of greenery and industrial lines crisscrossing the continents, white clouds swirling around, no pollution, a picture of an advanced species and a clean planet.

"Ensign, scan the planet, what can you tell me about their energy source?" the Captain said as she looked at the planet.

"It's Polaric energy captain, a very unstable form of plasma that is nonetheless very efficient at generating and transporting power. It generates levels of radiation that are detectable, but not harmful to humanoid life. It looks like that's what our long term scans had picked up."

The turbolift opened and Kes came out. The young female Ocampan had not changed much in the 6 months they had been in the Caretaker's system, however she carried herself now with a surety, as if on a mission.

"Captain, may I speak to you," Kes spoke, looking at the Captain with intense blue eyes.

"Of course Kes,"

"I had a vision that the planet below was destroyed by an explosion. It was horrible, thousands of people crying out in help, we have to help them!" Kes pleaded with the captain.

"I, uhh" The captain looked around the room, eyes finally landing on Harry. "Harry, can you tell if this is true?" she asked. He nodded and stood up. "Kes, come here," he said.

She walked over and he pulled her into a hug. "Are you able to show me what you saw?" He asked, looking down at her in his arms. She nodded, looking up at him. He felt a presence at his mind barriers, and let her in to show her vision.

Images of the planet below and the people walking around, a marketplace that was wiped clean, bodies dissolving in the energy released in the catastrophe. Burning rubble, and a planet uninhabitable and uninhabited afterwards.

Harry cut the vision off once he'd seen enough.

He released Kes, and spoke. "Captain, I know what this is. As I said in the meeting, Kes's people are the closest to us and their abilities may even exceed ours in certain areas. Kes's people are more sensitive to alternate timelines than ours, even though most of them haven't begun to tap into their powers."

"What she saw was a bootstrapped timeline that fizzled out where there was an explosion on the planet, Voyager investigated, crewmembers got caught in the past, and by getting them back we caused the explosion on the planet."

"How could you know that?" Kes asked, looking curiously up at him, "All I saw was death, no more."

"When you gave me your visions it came with the resonance frequency of the sub-dimension you experienced the vision from. As I told you my people, and especially me are experts in dimensional manipulation of all sorts, so while you gave me the memories I went there and lived it out to see what happened"

"OK, so we've established the veracity of Kes's claims" Tuvok stated "So logically we should leave this place so that we don't cause the very catastrophe that Kes warned us about."

"Captain, may I please have a meeting with you and commander Chakotay in your ready room?" Harry asked, gesturing towards the captain's room.

Chakotay and Janeway looked at each other and silently walked into the ready room.

"Agent, I hope there's a good reason for pulling us off the bridge like this," the Captain said as she gave looked at him impassively, possibly trying to divine the reasons he had. Chakotay simply stood there hands clasped in front of him as he regarded the wizard with a small look of amusement on his face, as if he knew what was coming.

"Captain. Yes. There is."

"The commanders of Section 31 and Starfleet are considering rescinding the prime directive in cases like this, where the planet could be in danger from some technology an alien species is developing, or has developed."

The captain looked at him in shock. "But that goes against the very principles of Starfleet-"

"Captain." Harry interrupted, with a sad look on his face as he sat on the steps. He looked very old as he looked up at her imploringly as he said "as a woman raised in the sciences, you know of the scientific method don't you?"

"Of course" indignation spewed from the captain as she responded.

"If a scientific theory has been proven false by evidence then the new reigning theory is the new fact, correct?"

"Yes, but I still don't see how this relates to Starfleet-"

"Starfleet has been growing stagnant, and complicit in numerous atrocities relating to multiple species in the time it has operated. The most recent of which is the Bajoran situation. Do you think it's morally right" Harry's eyes blazed as he looked at the Captain and Chakotay "to sit by and do _**nothing**_ while an entire people suffer under the rule of an oppressive people? Starfleet should have gone to war to defend the Bajoran people, and forced the Cardassians to withdraw. Doing nothing meant Starfleet was complicit in the occupation Captain. The new theory had yet to effect the old theory, too many people had too much riding on the prime directive to give it up."

"I've heard of the Bajoran situation of course, but we didn't know about it until the withdrawing of the occupation right?" Chakotay asked, looking concerned as he looked between Harry and Kathryn.

Harry sighed and looked down.

"Unfortunately that isn't the case. Starfleet intelligence along with Section 31 knew of the situation, and tried to present this to the Starfleet leadership getting them to interfere, to declare war on the Cardassians, or at the very least to attempt to broker a treaty with them. They even attempted to get the Federation leadership "

"But I don't understand Harry," Chakotay said "Starfleet defended the border colonies along the Cardassian borders when they tried to seize them, then when they later tried to grab them in a peace treaty. Surely at the same time they were defending their borders and signing treaties they would have tried to peacefully resolve the Bajoran occupation."

"Certain politicians" Harry sneered "were still dragging their heels on repealing the prime directive. It was only after the Cardassians unexpectedly withdrew from Bajor that we sent in relief efforts - led by Commander Sisko if you remember Captain" Harry said looking up at her. They had stopped at Deep Space Nine before departing.

She nodded, looking troubled "Yes, I remember the Commander. So what led Starfleet to consider repealing General Order One? And why haven't I heard about it yet?"

"When Starfleet went into Bajor to assist they found essentially a dying world. The Cardassians had raped the land and the people for sixty years, and if we had only given as much assistance as we could normally in that situation because of our non-interference policy they would have gone through much hardship for many years to come. The Federation and Starfleet leadership sat down with Section 31 to consider options. What they came up with is what's happening now."

"Part of the reason why I gave you so much background about myself and Section 31 Captain, is so that when you type in password GeneralOrder into your mission brief about the exploration of the Delta Quadrant, you would believe the order that will come up."

The captain looked at him, then walked behind her desk immediately. Sitting down, she pulled her terminal towards her and typed rapidly. Her eyes widened as she read what was on the screen, and turned the terminal towards Chakotay, looking up at him as he begun to read, then at Harry.

"The Prime Directive, also known as General Order One has been rescinded. Instead, the circumstances for interference or assistance must be judged at the time by an informed party. All incidences of this will be reviewed by a joint Federation, Starfleet and Section 31 panel, spelled to be fair by the wizards. They will decide if the actions were just."

"The assistance we have provided Bajor under the watchful eye of Commander Sisko and his first officer, Kira Nerys, a Bajoran, is things like providing them industrial replicators, weather control plants, soil reclamators to rejuvenate their ruined soil. On the wizarding side we have provided them with psychiatrists, botanists and doctors, all trained in both the normal way and the wizarding way of doing things."

"This is a damaged people and world Captain" Harry said. "Our psychiatrists can use spells and potions that assist in the curing of the mind. Trauma after being essentially in chains for sixty years is no small feat to overcome. That's why we're doing this, it's to help people like them that would have had to struggle before. This way at least they know they have someone out there to help them."

Harry looked straight into Janeway's eyes. "Being forged in the fires of pain and suffering, struggle and torment is not a way to live your life Captain, and I should know. If people are able to offer a way away from the struggle then they should, so that those they help can help others."

There was a few moments silence as the three of them reflected on the conversation. Harry looked around the spacious office wondering how many important talks like this would end up taking place in this room while he was here, and how many after besides.

"Given our new orders, and Mr Potter's impassioned talk, I'd say we have a job to do, Gentlemen" the Captain said as she stood up and walked to the door. "Coming?" She said with a smirk. Harry smoothly got to his feet and grinned as he followed her and Chakotay to the bridge.

"Ensign," Janeway said looking towards Kim "you have been scanning the planet, correct?"

"Yes ma'am, scans show a pre-warp planet. They do have a communications cluster that operates in subspace, and they have active sensors that we've been avoiding."

"Stop avoiding them" she ordered. "It's time to introduce ourselves to these people."

"Captain, might I remind you that this violates the prime directive?" Tuvok asked, a slight confused look on his face.

"The prime directive has been revoked. Instead a new policy put in place that it's up to the judgement of people knowledgeable of the local situation whether to interfere or assist in matters."

"Indeed" Tuvok stated, a surprised look on his face.

"Open hailing frequencies Mr Kim"

"Hailing frequencies open."

"This is Captain Kathryn Janeway aboard the starship Voyager, orbiting your planet. We come in peace."

After a beat or two the viewscreen turned on, and a man's image was displayed on the screen. He was an older man, with greying hair around his temples. He showed surprise as he regarded the bridge crew through the communication.

"Welcome to Tellor!" he exclaimed. "I must say you put the people here into a panic when we detected you amongst our satellites. How is it that you know our language? And why do you look like us?"

"We have a device which translates all languages into the user's primary language. We don't speak your language, it's just our technology. As for why we look like you, we don't know. We've only just arrived in this system."

Commander Chakotay stood up "Would you like to come on board for a meeting? We have a medical bay which can answer some of our questions about each other."

"That would be fantastic. My name is Jerran. How are you going to get me on board your ship?" he tilted his head as he regarded them.

"We have transporters which can instantly beam you up onto our ship"

His eyes widened in shock "You really do come from beyond the stars."

o~o~o

"Captain," Jerran said after he appeared in a swirling vortex of blue and white light along with one man and woman. "Greetings. That was quite the experience."

"Yes, it does take some getting used to. This is my first officer, Commander Chakotay, my chief of security Lieutenant Tuvok and my Chief intelligence officer, Agent Potter." she said, gesturing to each of the men respectively.

"I have brought my space minister, Ny Terla," he pointed to the man first "and security minister Ash" he said pointing out the woman with the long flat black hair.

"Pleased to meet you all" Janeway demurred as she pointed to the door to the transporter room. "Shall we? Sick bay is this way."

"Of course" Jerran said as they exited the room.

They walked in silence for a few moments, the guests heads on swivels as they walked around.

"It's quite an impressive ship you have here" Ash said. "How large is it and how many crew do you have?"

"We have fifteen decks, and 160 crew members" Chakotay said. "This vessel is designed for long term space missions and to literally support itself. It can perform self-repairs and even do things like repair other ships."

"That sounds like a massive advantage in space" Ash said. We haven't got there with ships this impressive, it takes too long to travel between systems. How long have you been travelling?"

"It took us three days to get here from our origin star system" Chakotay said, to the people's look of shock.

"How? It takes us 10 days to get to our nearest planet. We expected you to have been travelling for years and years to get here." Ny demanded, a serious look on his face. "The light speed barrier would mean the time dilation alone would be immense."

"We have achieved this through a technology called warp drives which folds space in front of our ship in order to break the light speed barrier without the time dilation." Janeway said, looking at Ny with respect as she recognised a fellow scientist.

"Here is sickbay" Tuvok stated as he gestured at the doors. They entered to see the Doctor waiting.

"Greetings, it's a great honour to meet you," the doctor smiled "my name is Joe, and I'll be your Doctor today."

"The doctor is a sentient hologram," Harry mentioned as Joe shook hands with all the party members.

"What's a hologram?" Ash said, looking intently at the Doctor.

"It's a combination of holograms and force fields to project the image of a regular person, while actually being a machine inside, algorithms and subroutines make up the Doctor's personality"

"And quite a personality it is too" the Doctor beamed at the greeting party. "Would you like to step this way please so I can perform scans on you all. Then we can get to the bottom of this mystery of why we all look the same."

The 7 of them trooped over to the large biobed at the end of the room. "If one of you would, could you please lie on the biobed?" Joe asked.

Ash volunteered and was soon being scanned by the biobed. A holographic version of her soon appeared standing next to the biobed. "And if you would, Captain" Joe asked politely. The Captain lied down and soon a holographic version of her joined Ash's one.

The Doctor gestured at the models and they overlayed each other. Red and green parts soon began to appear and the holograph exploded, to the delight of the guests. A veritable spread of parts began to arrange themselves in a manner only discernable to the Doctor and Harry, with a DNA comparison showing down the very bottom.

"OK, so the analysis has been completed" Joe said, turning to the members of the boarding party. "Similarities show you are 85% similar to us. There have been some interesting modifications, notably to your hair, eye and skin colour. It seems there is a more limited choice in those compared to us. Genetically you are compatible with us, however your immune systems are much weaker, I guess your viruses and bacteria aren't as persistent as ours."

"Given how closely you are related I'd say your people were abducted from our planet probably around 100,000 years ago and resettled here. I would need to run more scans to make sure but there you go."

"Interesting, thank you for that" Jerran said as he looked at his companions with an unreadable look on his face.

"Jerran, there is something else we need to discuss." Jerran looked at the Captain expectantly. "The power source you are using on your planet is quite dangerous, and we would like to offer an alternative."

Ny's eyes widened significantly, a look that did not go un-noticed by the Voyager contingent. "What do you mean?" Jerran blustered "Polaric energy is perfectly safe, there have been a number of studies done on the matter and they all proved its safety."

"That's incorrect Jerran and you know it" Ny said firmly. Those studies were paid for by the energy institute. Our scientific studies showed the danger, especially with the conduits providing a means of disaster if anything went wrong at the stations."

"That's exactly it minister," Harry said. "One of our crewmembers has a power that shows her alternate timelines, and in one of those your planet was destroyed to an accident at one of your power plants." Harry left out the part where Voyager was the one who caused the explosion.

"Your entire planet was destroyed, because of those very conduits. We can provide a reactor technology that is safe from explosion, developed over the last 200 years to be able to provide planetary wide power. We use it ourselves on our home planet."

Ash looked at them suspiciously "Why are you doing this, what do you have to gain from it? I know I wouldn't just give away that technology."

"We are willing to give you the reactor technology and help you install it and provide instructions on its maintenance, as well as how to contact our people if anything goes wrong." The Captain said. "As for why we're doing this, we don't consider it morally right to fly past your planet knowing you are living on a knife's edge in regards to your survival."

Jerran started "We have to consider this, you understand. This is bigger than all of us, this technology could bankrupt the entire power sector."

"We understand," Janeway said. How about we escort you back to the transporter room and you can contact us with your consensus.

"That would be agreeable Captain." Here Jerran paused. "I will talk to you soon."

They went back to the transporter room without incident, and the party beamed back to the surface.

"Captain, thank you for offering this to them." Harry smiled. "Even if they don't take our offer at least we offered. If they die because of their power generators it will be a tragedy but at least we didn't do nothing."

"Mr Potter, how far should I go with this newfound freedom? We could contact the entire planet and release information about how their polaric energy is dangerous. We could beam up their entire generator system and replace it without them being able to do anything as we bunker behind our shields. How far should I go here?"

"I believe this is part of why the prime directive existed in the first place," Tuvok said. "I understand the logic of having these looser guidelines so we can provide assistance in cases like this, but it's troubling having this much power over an entire species."

"That's why good people get into command," Chakotay replied quietly. "Without people to temper decisions they can easily get out of control. It's by listening to each other and other's opinions that we temper our actions."

"Well said Commander" Kathryn said. "I hope they take us on our offer but it's their decision, their path to take.

The four of them left for the bridge, thinking about the ramifications of their decision today.

o~o~o

"Captain, we're being hailed from the surface" Ensign kim announced.

Janeway looked at Chakotay and said "On Screen".

Jerran's face filled the screen, a stony look on his face. "Captain, thanks for your offer, but we're going to decline. The vote was heavily against this decision, the people don't trust you or your intentions."

"We understand Jerran," Katherine said, "are you open to allowing diplomats to visit you to open a dialog between our peoples?" she asked, looking hopefully at him.

"Yes, we will do that" Jerran replied. "Maybe your continued presence here will change some minds about the decision. We will see."

"Have a safe journey Voyager. I am sorry our answer wasn't different."

"One of our peoples have a saying Jerran, live long and prosper. Voyager out."

The viewscreen shut off leaving the view of the planet below. Looking at it Katherine couldn't help but see it as a grenade of a planet, a ticking time bomb.

Later in Janeway's ready room.

"Captain's log, supplemental. The Tellors refused our help, and I don't blame them, my diplomacy wasn't enough to convince them of the urgency for replacing their power systems. I should have spent more time gaining their trust before telling them that."

She smiled wryly "I guess this is why we have diplomacy teams who spent months and years getting to know people on planets".

She looked out of the window, sipping her coffee.

"I hope that our failure to persuade them doesn't cost lives in the future. Time will tell to see how our interaction affected their lives." The Captain announced, looking pensive. "It would have been easier to justify moving on without helping them with the prime directive, but that can't be done any more. We have stepped beyond the hard plains of certainty into the murky waters of the unknown."

"Whether it is a step down into the abyss or a step up to enlightenment remains to be seen."

A/N: Thanks for the reviews everyone who reviewed chapter 1. Let me know what you think of this one.


	3. Chapter 3

After Voyager left the Tellorian system, a course was set to an asteroid cluster where the ship's cook, Neelix, had said there was dilithium. The crew was going there to set up a dilithium refinery in order to assist with the manufacture of warp capable probes which could be used to establish a sensor network.

"Lieutenant Paris, how far away are we from the system?"

"Two minutes away Captain," Tom said as he tapped commands on his console.

"I want active scans of this system Ensign Kim," Janeway said as she sat back down in her chair "We don't want any surprises."

"Yes ma'am," Kim said as he entered in an active scan pattern to the computer.

"Captain, I will scan for any computer systems that may be active in the system when we drop out of warp," Agent Potter said as he entered the parameters for those commands into his console. "If the ship's primary sensor array can't get anything, then mine should be able to."

"I'm curious Agent," Tuvok stated, "Are the intelligence sensors more advanced because of your people's power, or is there just technology that Starfleet isn't allowed access to?"

"Both I'm afraid Tuvok," Harry said as he looked at the security officer. "Access to this technology requires a magical core at the moment, however I've been told that people are working on integrating the systems better so that they can be used by non-magical people."

"That would be wise," Tuvok said, "What if you were incapacitated, how would your relief access those systems?"

"Everyone who's set to relieve me is magical." Harry said, "Part of manning arrays like this on starships comes the requirement of being in the know about both worlds. Everyone assigned here who relieve me on the bridge meet that requirement."

"Yes, you did say there was more than just you who were magical when you told us about all of this" Chakotay said, his eyebrows furrowing. "Would there be any benefit to preferentially selecting those crewmembers for away missions or particularly difficult tasks then?"

"No" Harry said as he swivelled to face Chakotay, "Part of our agreement with Starfleet command is that we don't want preferential treatment, especially with things like away missions. If we did that then every time there was an incident that would be one magical lost. For all our numbers are great at the moment, after a few years of this we may end up losing a large proportion of our population. No, we need to keep everything based on merit, not magical ability."

"Captain, we have arrived in the unnamed system," Ensign kim said, as the viewscreen showed a shimmering of the starlight as the ship dropped out of warp back into normal space.

"My scans show the asteroids Neelix suggested contained dilithium, and… yes my readings show dilithium on them, in large quantities."

"Good work Ensign," The Captain said, standing up. "What about your scans Mr Potter? Do they show anything out of the ordinary?"

"Yes Captain, I'm afraid there's a large computer system somewhere on that asteroid. I am working to break into it without alerting them, however it may take some time. From this we can assume someone else has a base here."

"Open hailing frequencies Mr Kim," Katherine said.

"Hailing frequencies open."

"This is Captain Kathryn Janeway of the starship Voyager. We would like to get in contact with the owners to negotiate access to the dilithium on your asteroid."

A few moments of silence went by.

"No response Captain," Kim said. "There doesn't seem to be anything down there that I can detect."

"Perhaps it's part of an old relic," Tuvok mused "There may be nobody down there any more, it could just be their computer system that's left."

"I'm still unable to hack into the computer system. Whoever made it didn't want anybody getting in Captain," Harry said, turning to face Janeway. "My suggestion is that we should proceed with caution. Given that their computer system either doesn't respond in the same way as ours, or their security is simply better, there's definitely something down there."

"I have triangulated their computer system through the resonance frequencies their data transfers are giving off in subspace, I can localise it down to a 1km area of the asteroid. Ensign Kim, I've sent that to your console."

"Received," the Ensign said as he looked over the data. "I've run an analysis of the data, cross referencing it with the readings of the surface of the asteroid. It appears that the location where we're getting the signal and the area where we picked up the dilithium is one and the same."

"Thank you, Gentlemen," The Captain said. "Chakotay, take an away team and investigate the source of the transmission and the dilithium."

Chakotay stood up and gestured to Harry. "Potter, Kim, Tuvok, you're with me." The other three men got out behind their respective stations and followed the commander to the turbolift.

o~o~o

In a cavern on the asteroid the brown craggy walls were illuminated by the radiant blue beam of the transporter materializing the four members of the away team. The four of them appeared facing outwards, phasers and tricorders drawn.

"HK, you're with me," Chakotay said. He pointed at an entryway, "HP, Tuvok, take that direction. We meet back here in five minutes. Open comm system. Move out." he barked as he and HK moved towards the opposite entrance.

As they entered the next cave system Tuvok and Harry were actively scanning for the source of dilithium and the computer system they encountered.

"Tuvok, does this area feel off to you?" Harry asked, face squinted. "Hang on, I'm going to try something."

He appeared to do nothing, however a few moments later he said "This area is not what it appears. I've reached out and checked the area around us with my senses, and we're in a facility of some sort. These walls are made of matter, however behind them is some sort of bulkhead, and I can detect people behind that."

As he said this, they heard a yell, and phaser fire start. Both of them started running towards the sound. As they entered the cave system the firefight was coming from it was all over, an alien with what looked like lesions on his face was lying unconscious with a weapon next to him, HK was there kicking the weapon away from the being, phaser trained on him.

"What happened Commander," Tuvok asked, looking at Chakota who was calmly covering the area behind Tuvok and Harry with his phaser.

"He came out of nowhere, but we were prepared. HK started firing immediately, and I helped box him in. We heard more weapon fire just before you came in, but it stopped as soon as you came. There are still more of them out there."

Harry seemed to blindly fire his phaser at one of the cave walls. It shimmered out of existence as soon as he fired revealing the cold walls of a facility. A second shot drilled into the surprised being who was revealed.

Harry smiled slightly, and holstered his phaser.

"Commander, I can't detect any more life signs. My senses show me there are only six souls aboard this asteroid. Apologies for not detecting them beforehand, it seems like their technology has somewhat effective dimensional shielding which is why our subspace scans couldn't penetrate the barriers they had up. It's also why we couldn't detect the structure here."

"OK. HK, Tuvok, take the two of them back to the ship, put them in isolation fields in the main sickbay - given their appearance and my scans they have multiple species' worth of skin on their face. I'd say their organs are probably no different."

"Commander, we should consider the possibility of an infectious disease," Tuvok stated. "It would be prudent to bring the Doctor here rather than risk contaminating the ship if they do indeed have some sort of contagion."

"Acknowledged. Chakotay to the Doctor."

"Doctor here"

"Joe, we engaged hostiles on the surface, and suspect they may pose a biohazard. We need you down here to ascertain risk. Bring as much equipment as you need. Chakotay out."

"Tuvok, you and I will remain here to guard the hostiles. HK, Harry, see if you can find the computer system here. We aren't going to risk possible further infection, so make do with what you have."

"Acknowledged, Commander" Harry said smoothly as him and HK walked into the facility corridor.

o~o~o

"So who first started calling you HK?" Harry asked as the two Harry's walked through the cold grey corridor.

"Well, Ensign Kreshner in stellar cartography is also a Harry. Him, Tom and I were joking about how we have enough Harry's on the ship to run the place. Tom decided then that we were getting new nicknames - I got HK and Kreshner got EK."

"Apparently seniority has its perks," Harry said. "HK is a cool nickname, did Tom tell you why he chose that for you?"

"No, he just said I'd find out someday." HK laughed, "What does it mean?"

"It's a reference to Star Wars," Harry said as they came to a control room. The stark blues of the room stood out compared to the greys of the corridors before. They each moved to a separate workstation and started interfacing their tricorders.

"I've started a data transfer. It looks like local access trumps whatever security they had via subspace access, Agent."

"Yes, I've got full access as well. You set your tricorder to download historical and medical data if any. I'll handle the security related data."

"So, you were saying?" HK asked as he looked at Harry poring over his tricorder and the alien computer systems.

"It's from part of the Star Wars expanded universe, before Lucasfilm got brought. HK was a flesh-hating android. Imagine if Data hated non-artificial life."

HK laughed, "You amuse me, meatbag. Tom told me you'd get a kick out of the name."

Harry looked at him with a nostalgic smile on his face "You know, one thing that always makes me wonder about you non-magicals is why huge entertainment like that was never turned into holonovels. You think about it, and it's ripe for the taking - imagine taking part in the story!"

"Yeah, the problem though is how much time it would take to produce, and most people aren't as interested in entertainment as much as they used to be. I'd wager that most people on earth prefer being able to contribute to society as a whole through the galactanet and being able to influence the future in that way or by going into Starfleet or the federation is far more interesting than the curiosity of the holodeck."

"A lot has changed since I was born Harry," Agent Potter said, looking into the distance. "When I was a child and through into my first hundred years human society revolved around entertainment, not the so-called utopian society we have now. We had money and greed, and although the federation has something similar with energy credit nobody gets rich off it any more, anything over a certain amount earned is redistributed."

"In some ways humanity has lost a lot of what it was. In other ways it's so much more. I think the violent swing into a more idealistic, serious and less fun society is something I still have to wrap my head around."

"Sure, I like duty and helping others as much as the next 500-odd year old being, but I take time to read novels, to play in holosuites, to have fun. If I hadn't I'd have slit my wrists ages ago."

"That's a very different point of view Harry" HK said, looking directly at him, "If you don't work towards helping others with all your being then why do it? Aren't you not doing enough if you don't help all the time?"

"Not at all, in fact I ascribe to the teachings of a number of schools Harry. I strive for balance in my life. It's just as important to have fun as it is to help others. In fact, I find it's more fun doing leisure activities and I have to force myself to help others. I do it though because of duty."

Harry walked towards HK. "A piece of advice Ensign. You have risen up quickly. You have an extremely distinguished service record so far. I've heard of few ensigns getting assigned to be the bridge crew on a starship such as this, especially with us not knowing if we'd have to come back to the alpha quadrant the hard way, which would have taken many many years."

"Try to slow down a little. Enjoy your spare time, instead of pushing every minute. Before you know it you'll be retired and looking back. You'll have a few hobbies, sure but nothing that ever compares to your time on a starship. Most of your retirement will be filled with regret that you can't serve more."

He laid his hand on HK's shoulder. "I say this because I've seen this before. There were captains like Kirk who knew how to have a good time, but never felt at home outside of Starfleet because he had nothing to do, and knew nothing about this new life he had. I've worked with some of the best and brightest and the ones who were happiest through their whole life knew how to relax."

"I'll keep that in mind, Sir," HK said.

He was saved from the moment by his tricorder beeping. "Agent, the search has completed."

o~o~o

"Captain, these people are known as the Vidiians." The away team was back on Voyager, having been cleared by the Doctor.

"They prey on other races, harvesting their organs, including their skin. They use this to fight back a disease they call The Phage." HK said. "The Doctor has done more intensive research into this, Joe?"

"Thanks HK," Joe said, standing up and moving to the screen in the conference room. The senior staff looked on with curiosity as images of the Vidiians came up on the screen.

"The Phage is an autoimmune disease, targeting the cells in the body, and changing their genetic signature. The Vidiians have a much more active immune system than most races, meaning they would fight off most diseases rapidly compared to known species."

"The disadvantage here is that their bodies fight themselves once they start manifesting symptoms. The disease is genetic, they have it since birth, so it's extremely unlikely to jump the species boundary."

"Doctor, what is your assessment on their medical technology?" Commander Chakotay asked.

"They are ahead of us in many areas. Their transplanting techniques are decades ahead of ours, however we are more genetically advanced than they are. It looks like most of their medical fraternity decided to treat the symptoms rather than getting to the root cause of the issue. Their genetic detection and manipulation technology is sufficient to get rid of the disease within one generation, however they haven't thought to apply it in the right way."

"Captain," Joe said, looking concerned, "We are essentially dealing with a race here that doesn't care about sentient life. They prey on others and harvest their organs like cattle. Anyone who is a match for them gets harvested."

"One of the core parts of my programming as a clinician is to do no harm. These butchers offend me right to my core. We need to do something about this, and if it means shackling their entire race, so be it."

"Thank you Doctor, that will be all." The Captain nodded at him, and he took his seat, looking out of the conference window into space.

Kathryn looked around at the members of the Senior staff. Tuvok sat impassively, Chakotay looked pensive. The Doctor looked angry, as did B'Elanna. HK and Paris both looked at the other people's reactions, but Harry…

The Captain looked at Harry and felt the sadness coming off him in waves. Unlike the others his face was resigned, his shoulders dropped. "Agent, are you ok?" She asked looking at him.

"No Captain. We're about to have to go to war, I can feel it. I had a look at the database along with the Doctor, and the zeitgeist of the Vidiians means their people all support their 'medical'," here Harry air quoted, "practitioners. Whatever Starfleet decides, I will need to leave Voyager for a while, I can't not act in this situation."

"What do you mean Agent?" Chakotay asked, leaning forward.

Harry sighed, "You know how I said I'm the best magical practitioner? Well it's not just because of my 500 years of life, or my practice in magic for those 500 years. It's also because I have a larger soul than normal."

"Philosophers and religion have theorized about the existence of a soul for a long time. The wizarding world has known about its existence for millennia but it's only recently that medical science has been able to detect it. Upon creation of the brain of a being they start tapping into higher dimensions. The energy transfers back and forward, leaving an imprint in higher dimensions. For a magical user, the soul is literally larger than the soul of a non-magical because there's more transference of energy between the normal realm and the higher dimensions."

He saw he had their full attention. "When I was a baby my soul and that of the greatest dark lord at the time, Voldemort mingled due to a dark ritual he performed to split his soul. The reason for this is as long as that transfer of energy existed then his soul couldn't be drawn back to the higher dimension, and he would remain anchored to this world."

"When I was a teen, he killed me, sending my soul along with his into the higher dimension. I saw my headmaster there." He smiled, reminiscing fondly about the memory.

"Upon my return I killed that dark lord. After I came back I started noticing spells were easier, that I had a greater connection to magic than before. My friend, Hermione researched this with me along with some of our greatest minds, and we found that due to his soul connection anchoring mine it ripped open my connection with the higher dimension. I had the greatest connection to the higher dimensions than anyone before."

"The killing of another being fractures the soul, which is how Voldemort was able to make his soul anchors. The research into this after we found his methods and the results were banned and highly classified. In all the time since, nobody has managed to replicate his work, and the unique accident regarding my greater powers has never happened again."

"I'm the only living being in wizarding history with a connection to magic this great. I have a responsibility to act here. I could go in alone and kill everyone in charge and put people in charge who had a more moderate mindset."

"How many would you kill Harry?" HK asked. "In order to stop the Vidiians. Would you kill them all?"

There was silence and Harry looked pained at the question. "If necessary, that would be my burden to bear."

"Not anymore Agent. Harry," Kathryn said, "You are a part of a federation of planets. You spoke when you revealed yourself to us that you may not always be here and it wouldn't be fair on others if you solved all of their problems."

Harry looked at her in surprise. "Well Agent, we will take this to Starfleet and convince them to send ships to negotiate the Vidiian's surrender. I'm sure with the Wizarding world's participation this will go quicker."

"But there may be large loss of life on the Federation's side." Harry said, looking confused, "I could go in and wipe them out with no loss to our side."

"That's true, but how would we be bringing the Vidiians to justice if we killed them all? Remember the Bajoran situation Harry? You didn't go in there because you trusted Starfleet to act once they found out the truth. Trust us, again. We can possibly solve this peacefully, and if not I will implore Starfleet to act if not."

"Agent, would you like to sit in on the interrogation of the Vidiian prisoners? I am conducting this straight after this meeting." Tuvok stated, looking at him.

"Yes, that would be agreeable Tuvok." Harry said. "Captain, thanks. I thought I would have to go to war again, sometimes I forget that I have a support network in those around me. It's tough, you'd think I'd get used to delegating responsibilities but it's hard when it's something this charged, you know?"

"Thanks Harry," The Captain smiled. "I will contact Starfleet command right away and let you know their decision. Dismissed."

The room broke out, and Harry headed with Tuvok to the brig.

o~o~o

They arrived and nodded at the security member manning the console. The brig was a small room, Due to her size, there was only a single cell, both Vidiians whispering inside.

As they saw the two new Starfleet officers they stopped, and looked at them intently.

"Well? What do you want?" One of them spat, "Are you going to kill us? Get on with it then, or we'll die waiting." The other Vidiian started to laugh, and the other spit towards the two, the forcefield flaring to life briefly as it dealt with the intrusion.

"You know," Harry said as he stared grimly at the two prisoners, "The Captain has attempted to persuade me not to kill your entire species." The room started to grow dark around the edges, tendrils of shadow reaching in towards the now cowering beings. "But she didn't say I could spare the two of you. I want to know what you were doing in your base."

"Experiments!" One screamed out as the tendrils almost touched him. Slowly they receded, staying at the edge of the room, but remaining in the Vidiian's peripheral vision.

"We were doing experiments splicing our DNA with that of samples taken from other species."

"And do you know how those samples were obtained, butcher?" Harry asked coldly.

"Yes, but we had no choice, if we don't cure this our species will die out!"

"We will no longer let you prey on other races, insect." Harry's voice grew icy. "Before I leave I will know all you do, and use that to take down your species."

With that announcement the two Vidiians wordlessly collapsed onto the hard ground. Tuvok started forward, but a hand from Harry stopped him. "It's ok Tuvok, they will wake in a few hours, no worse for wear."

"What knowledge did you just gain, Agent?" Tuvok asked, looking at Harry with his eyebrows furrowed. Surely that wasn't long enough to read their minds?"

"Yes," Harry sighed, "Unfortunately it was long enough. I have access to every detail of their lives. I'll be passing these memories onto one of the intelligence members of section 31, to help them pursue a peace with these savages."

"If they decline the peace then the memories should help Starfleet win the war faster. While these two didn't know much they do have access to the wider Vidiian medical intelligence network, which will be useful for one thing that could make peace - a cure."

"Do you think the Federation will give them a cure considering their past?" Tuvok asked.

"Not right away, however it could be a viable means of ensuring their surrender and them turning over everyone who's performed a war crime. If nothing else the Federation needs to find some way of helping the victims of these barbarians, and anyone innocent of the butchering of other races." Harry's eyes shone bright green as he spoke passionately.

"Letting the wholesale butchering of species go unopposed would be illogical," Tuvok stated. "When I heard about the change in the prime directive I must admit it did not sit well with me."

Tuvok frowned. "I have been in Starfleet for a long time, Agent. In all that time I never questioned the logic of the prime directive. I am wondering now if I should have."

"Many people should have Tuvok, but the past is the past, and we need to focus on what we can do right now."

"I can't fault your logic, Harry." Tuvok said. "Shall we inform the Captain of the results of the interrogation?"

"Yes, and I need to contact my people to get them started on these memories."

The two of them stepped into the turbolift heading to the bridge.

o~o~o

"Thank you all for coming," Janeway said as she stood in front of the screen in the conference room, the senior staff in the chairs around the table in the center.

"I have received orders from Starfleet, we are to continue exploring the delta quadrant. They are mobilizing an infiltration team to ascertain the extent of the Vidiian's crimes, and are currently debating what sort of force to use in the federation council."

"Harry," Katherine looked at him sympathetically, "Starfleet command has said you will not be joining the fight. We will be turning the prisoners over to Starfleet intelligence. They, along with Section 31 will lead the infiltration efforts."

"Thank you, Captain." Harry sighed, "But I've calmed down now. I got my orders - they're to stay with this ship. I'm glad they took this out of my hands, I may have done something rash. There are some really strong people in the wizarding world who won't let me go on a rampage again. I'm glad Voyager has people to do the same."

There was silence after Harry's reply. Captain Janeway cleared her throat, "Starfleet plans to get more information from the Vidiians and inform and question other species neighbouring them here in the delta quadrant to see the extent of their crimes."

"We will continue on, exploring the area. We know that from our foray into the Vidiian's computer systems that their people are sparsely patrolling a large area away from here, so we will most likely run into them again. We've been given full discretion to do whatever is necessary if we encounter them again."

"Harry will take it from here"

"Aye, Captain." Harry stated. "Starfleet has started building new ships, focused more on automated running, so they can be manned by a minimal crew. There has been success in using the doctor's holographic matrix to create more of him."

"Are they considered a new life form, like the Doctor?" Ensign Kim asked. "I thought the Doctor was thought unique, a one-of-a-kind anomaly, with his sentience as an emergence of his programming and experience."

"May I continue from here?" The Doctor asked. Harry nodded.

"With my permission, Starfleet was able to clone my program, and with Section 31's help they used the same holo-emitter technology that is inside of me to create new copies. Each of them has my memories and programming, but they will be their own unique beings, having their own experiences and depending on what they end up doing, potentially their own wants and needs."

Harry took over explaining. "The emitter the Doctor has is a fusion of Wizard and Starfleet technology, the technology is a lot larger than it appears, and it's housed in a pocket dimension with only the emitters visible, housed in a casing. The technology can withstand some phaser fire, more than a normal sentient being, but not on a starship level."

"The holograms were, recruited, let's say, because of the logistics concern with manning the hundreds of new starships Starfleet is commissioning. They are also using an automation system designed for a deep space war ship called the Prometheus. This allows the crew count to be much less. With that and the new holographic race offering to help, the federation will be able to create enough ships to deal with the Vidiian threat."

"Because of the caretaker's array, and the new ship transportation technology," Captain Janeway took over, "We are able to get reinforcements to remote areas of the federation much quicker. We have been dropping sensor probes at each star system in order to maintain a scanning array for the federation. We can use this to work out where to place ships to counter the Vidiian threat, and to stop them from preying on other races."

"Our journey so far has been a beneficial one." Janeway smiled, looking around the room. "And it would not have been possible without each and every one of you. The scientific discoveries we could make, and the races we could meet will be beneficial for decades to come for the federation."

"Dismissed."

* * *

A/N: Man, that felt like a long chapter to write. I'd like to give a massive shoutout to stargatesg1fan1, especially for calling Harry Kim HK. I've found when writing this that having two Harry's is actually a pain when you're trying to distinguish their dialog.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: All stardates are made up. Consensus is that the shows did that too.

 _Captain's log, stardate 10245.4. On our journey through the delta quadrant we have encountered an interesting nebula…_

"Captain, we are approaching the nebula, distance one million kilometers." Paris said as he brought the ship into a parallel cruising course.

"Ensign, agent, begin active scans." Janeway stated as she looked at her display computer on the arm of her chair.

The bridge was silent for a few minutes as the scanners did their work. Everyone was looking at the outputs of the scans.

"That's interesting Captain," Chakotay said, looking at his PADD, "there are currents inside that nebula."

"It's also rich in Omicron particles." Ensign Kim piped up.

"Aah yes," Harry said, as he looked at his scanning console. "What you can't see from your sensors is the nature of this nebula. Captain," he said looking at her, "Permission to bring Kes onto the bridge."

"Permission granted, Agent." The captain nodded at him. "According to Starfleet command her and her people have been seconded into Section 31, and will begin training under wizards to work on unlocking their people's potential."

Harry nodded back at her, and entered in a command on his console, sending a message to Kes to come to the bridge. He got an acknowledgement immediately.

"She's on her way Captain."

"Good. Captain to the Doctor."

"Come in Captain." Joe's voice came in over the comm system.

"I would like you to perform your own analysis of this nebula. We're seeing interesting patterns to the phenomenon, and I know processing massive amounts of data is your forte."

"Aye, Captain. You will have my analysis soon. Joe out."

The turbolift doors opened, and Kes came out. "Reporting for Duty, Captain." She said as she walked onto the bridge.

"Welcome, Kes." Janeway smiled. She pointed at Harry's console. "You can join Agent Potter over there." she said gently, motioning towards the intelligence bay stationed next to the conn..

"Thank you," Kes said as she walked over to Harry's console and sat on the offered seat.

"Kes, I would like you to reach out with your mind like I showed you, towards the nebula."

Kes closed her eyes, and the bridge crew could see the concentration on her face.

"I can feel something out there, a large presence. It's, animalistic in nature. Its mind is very simple."

She opened her eyes. "It's mostly harmless - it's drifting through space on its own power, and it has enough of an ecosystem that it doesn't need to eat anything. I feel like it's hovering on the border of sapience, and given enough time could grow into an intelligent being."

"Joe to the Captain." The doctor's voice blared through the comm.

"Go ahead Doctor," The Captain said, looking at Kes with amazement.

"That nebula is alive, Captain." Joe said excitedly. "The eddys you scanned are part of a circulatory system, and the central nebula is protected by large swathes of omicron particles. It has its own circulatory system, and has rudimentary brain waves."

"The scans show that it would be inadvisable to enter this being - I think it would likely digest us, or worse, see us as as a foreign body and attack us. The power in that nebula is more than the output of our warp drive by a factor of one thousand."

"Fascinating, Doctor." The Captain said. "We just got told from Kes that the being has an animalistic nature, and it's mostly harmless, but yes we won't enter it."

"EK, I'd like for you to put out a warning buoy letting passers by know not to disturb the creature. It's possible that some down on their luck being might see the omicron particles in that nebula as a readily available source of energy." The captain said, as she stood up.

"Kes, Harry, Could you please come to my ready room?" She asked as she started walking towards the door to the captain's hideaway. Harry and Kes soon followed her through the door.

o~o~o

"Shall we?" Janeway motioned towards the couches and walked over to the replicator. "Tea?" She asked, and getting assent a steaming pot of tea and three glasses were placed on the table after the replicator produced them.

"Congratulations, Kes," Janeway started, "I'm happy to see your people get the training you need."

"Thank you Captain." Kes smiled, sipping at her tea.

"My orders from Starfleet were vague, Agent. They said you would clarify them." Janeway turned to Harry with a piercing look in her eye.

"Sorry Captain," Harry gulped down his mouthful of tea, wincing at the heat. "Section 31 is used to having the run of things, so they are still getting used to full cooperation with Starfleet. The long story short is that I am still here under an advisory role, in the same way as all Agents have been in the past, it's just that Kes will be joining me on the bridge to help further her training."

"Captain, if I may?" Kes asked. Janeway looked at her and nodded. "My people have long had telepathic abilities, but it wasn't until you helped repair The Caretaker and we met the wizards that we realized just how far our abilities could go. The Caretaker along with some wizarding specialists and a group of us determined just what sort of powers we had, apart from the basic telepathic powers we all displayed."

"That's what we were doing in the Ocampan system for 6 months Captain." Harry said. "The wizarding world and Starfleet decided then and there to start releasing knowledge of our powers to select members of the Federation, especially since we had finally encountered a species with powers to rival ours."

"So does that mean that this is a sort of cultural exchange, you being here Kes?" Janeway asked.

"That's part of it, yes. I'm here for training as I am the most powerful telepath of my species, I just don't have much control or training compared to most wizards. There's also the dimensional shifting aspect which we only found out about a few missions ago. It's partly cultural as well, our species have spent most of their lives underground on the same planet, so it's refreshing to be able to explore the universe and meet new and exciting species."

"The other reason Captain is that the Ocampans have agreed to join the Federation. Them embedding in Starfleet and training under wizards will help bootstrap their skill sets, meaning Starfleet as a whole is more able to respond to threats. Think the Borg, part of the reason for this mission into the Delta quadrant is because Starfleet command knew the Borg were here."

Janeway's eyebrows raised. "Why wasn't I notified about this, Agent?" She asked. "I'm the Captain of this ship, but it feels like you're above me in rank and end up knowing more than me. As far as I knew we were only coming here to assess the long range transportation abilities of the array, not to go after the Borg."

"That's true." Harry agreed, "and again, I'm sorry. There were contingencies after contingencies that were told to me as the ranking Agent on the ship. In the event of us becoming stranded here you would have been informed. In the case of your death, the senior staff would have been informed."

Harry sighed. "I will speak to my leaders about releasing more of this information to the captains of vessels, rather than the agents. Just remember Captain that for the longest of times we had to keep this sort of information secret due to what would happen if someone found out about the wizarding world."

"I think perhaps more cooperation is in order, Harry. I can take finding out from you in here, but if you revealed information like this on the bridge in front of the crew they may feel like I do - that it's essentially Section 31 leading Starfleet around, not Starfleet."

"Agreed Captain," Harry said. "I will talk to my colleagues in Section 31 reminding them cooperation is key."

"Thank you Harry. And again, welcome to the Federation, Kes." Katherine said.

o~o~o

Harry and Kes walked down the silver corridors of the Starship Voyager, their bootsteps echoing off the walls.

"Harry," Kes said hesitantly.

"Yes?" Harry asked.

"I sense that you held back from Captain Janeway. Is there more to this joining between the Wizards, Federation and Ocampan peoples?"

Harry looked at her as they entered the lab. "You're very perceptive Kes. To think that a few months ago your people's abilities were mostly unrealized." He chortled, "Of course, you are right. There is more to the joining than the Captain and most of Starfleet know. Your people have as I've said before dimensional abilities greater than our own, able to view alternate time streams before they happen."

"Tell me Kes," he said as he looked into her blue eyes, "what do you think the general Federation will think if the Ocampan's abilities become widely known in the same way as the wizards?"

Kes's brow furrowed as she looked over the lab, it's blinking equipment providing no distraction for her racing thoughts. "We'll be used." She said as she looked at Harry. A pleased grin split his face.

"Correct. As it stands now the treaty between the Federation and my peoples is still being written. We are afraid of a wizard-specific post, in the same vein as what we have now with the agents of starfleet intelligence which we second into from time to time. We are happy to help out, but don't want Starfleet or the Federation dictating terms to us. It's like I said to the Captain before, imagine if there was a preference for wizards on away teams."

Harry sighed. "This issue is very difficult, because on the one hand we want to help out, but on the other we don't want to be taken advantage of, including things like preferential treatment because of our abilities. On the other hand, we should be put in certain posts because of our abilities."

"Your people have spoken at length about these laws and treaties Harry, but why do you need such heavily worded treaties and laws? Surely people follow the gist of the law, not the bare words. That's how it is on our world."

"Aah, you don't have lawyers." At Kes's confused look he continued, "Lawyers are there to get around the letter of the law to confuse meaning and semantics to make the law say things that wasn't in the spirit of it. Or sometimes to take cold words and get the spirit of the law out of it instead."

"Over time, the lawyers have made laws more complicated because of people being able to get away with breaking the laws, so more laws are made. Then if other things happen that people think need to be stopped more laws get created on top of those laws. Eventually they've ended up like they are now, where you need a whole education in them to understand."

"Now, in saying that," Harry sat down and motioned to Kes to sit as well, "Wizarding laws are no better, and in some cases are much, much worse. The part that is difficult for treaties between us is that the wizarding world law is fundamentally different to non-magical law. You have two sets of laws which are both based off events that happened in the distant past. There's basically no overlap between them."

"So are your people having problems defining common ground with the Federation law?" Kes asked.

"Yes, in matters as simple as what is considered sentient, or sapient if you prefer. We have a precedent going back around 350 years which considers beings which the Federation would consider animals sapient. It's frustrating because we've been aware of these differences for a long time, but the revealing was rushed so the groundwork for most of this wasn't done."

"Groundwork?" Kes questioned, "Do you mean wizards attempting to change the Federation laws so they are more compatible?"

"Yes. It was meant to be starting in 5 or so years time but the expansion into the delta quadrant and finding your species accelerated the timeline for this."

"Why? Why would finding my people accelerate this?" Kes asked, leaning forward.

"Your people are very similar to mine in regards to power. We couldn't just stand by and see how your fate with the Federation played out, we had to have a hand in it publically. We had to set a precedent, and if something went wrong then two peoples with powers would be a stronger case than just one."

"Ok, that's enough boring politics." Harry said as he leaned forward, "Now show me how your manipulation of time is going."

o~o~o

Harry and Kes entered the Holodeck, greeted by an old wooden bar, its main feature a large pool table, with Tom and Harry playing, the air hazy with smoke.

"Hey fellas," Harry said, "Nice place you made here Tom."

"Thanks Harry," Tom said, "It's a place called Chez Sandrine - it's a bar in Marseille, in France. I spent a lot of time here as a cadet, and even more afterwards. I love this place," He looked around and smiled fondly, "It has a great atmosphere."

"It's certainly cozy," Kes added, looking appraisingly at the bar. "Does that bar serve alcohol?" She asked, looking over at the female bartender leaned up against the bar.

"Of course, but it's synthohol, sorry," Tom said, lining up his next shot.

"Sounds good to me, I haven't had a chance to try it yet." She said as she walked up to the bar and spoke to the bartender.

"She's quite adventurous, isn't she," HK said as he looked at Kes appraisingly.

"What does it feel like," HK started as Kes walked over carrying a drink, "To be able to scan space and beings with your mind, Kes?"

Kes took a sip of her drink as Harry walked over to the bar. "Gents, anything? He asked on the way, and nodded as they gave their answers.

"Well Ensign, it's like I'm in the middle of a rolling ocean, being able to feel all of the waves and currents around me in a large radius."

"Doesn't that get overwhelming?" Tom asked as he grabbed the beer Harry got for him. HK did the same as he looked curiously at Kes for her answer.

"At first, after Harry showed me how, yes. But now all of that noise is background. I can let my instincts and knowledge guide me on what is more important. I can also focus on a point, like with the nebula today. I'm still learning though, sometimes it's hard to block everything out, and sometimes I've felt so much that my senses become numb." She shrugged and took another sip of her drink, already half gone.

"So do you know what everyone is thinking?" HK asked.

Kes laughed, her light laughter contagious, causing the others to smile along with her. No, my powers require more direction and concentration to do that, and I don't have quite enough discipline yet. I can only get feelings at the moment, but even then they're vague and I have to concentrate to get them."

"That's fascinating. Harry what about you? You've explained some of your powers, how do your people do with mind reading?"

"How about an example, Lieutenant?" Harry asked, and called to the computer to create a deck of cards. Tom nodded his assent, and Harry dealt out 5 cards, face down.

"Have a look at the cards, then I'll tell you what they are."

Tom did so, picking up the cards, as soon as he looked at them Harry called out "Ace, King, Queen, Jack, ten of Spades."

He looked at Harry in surprise. "Did you stack the deck as well?"

Harry nodded.

"Holy shit, I'm not playing cards with you ever." he laughed. "That's some scary stuff Harry, can you dig deeper and get childhood memories or things like that without anyone becoming aware of it?"

"Not really. You need to have line of sight to their eyes, and they will feel something, I've heard it described as an insatiable need to remember something, feeling like someone's rifling through your memories."

HK looked concerned. "Do you have any rules on when to use it?"

"Not really. Like the prime directive with Starfleet now, it's up to the particular case and every case gets judged the same. So something like this where I'm demonstrating to you is fine. Something like getting all of the memories out of the two Vidiian's is fine because of their crimes. It wouldn't be fine to do this as I'm walking past a random woman on the street however, because there's no justification for that, just curiosity."

"And what's the punishment?" Kes asked, looking curiously up at Harry.

"Well, that's more complicated. If the offender is useful to the wizarding world, then they get put into time dilation with certain therapists who are longer living than humans. If they're not then they get put into therapy still, just not under time dilation. What their reoffending chance is determines their level of incarceration."

"So if someone is 'useful'," HK used air quotes, "they get better treatment? How is that fair?"

"It's been that way for hundreds of years Harry. During the time that law was passed the number of wizards was severely diminished because of World War III. Over time the law just seems to make a lot of sense, and hasn't been repealed. I've even gone through the time dilation system a few times during my younger and more rash years."

"What for?" Tom asked, eagerly looking at Harry.

"That's a story for another time," Harry smirked as the door opened and Janeway and the rest of the senior staff came in.

"Captain! Welcome to Chez Sandrine!" Tom grinned, spreading his arms with a flourish. "I created this haven for the crew to relax in while off duty. Care for a game of pool?"

The Captain looked at Chakotay with an amused look on her face, then turned to Paris and said, "Of course. It's been a while since I've played, so I may be a little rusty."

"That's ok, Captain, I'll go easy on you." Tom said as he racked up the balls. "Want to break?" He asked as he handed Katherine a cue, motioning to the table.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Janeway said as she walked up towards the table. With a fluid motion she broke, sinking three balls. She relentlessly sunk ball after ball until only the black eight ball remained.

She looked at Tom and shot at the ball, sinking it in the corner pocket.

"Thanks for the game, Tom." She smirked and walked over to the bar, leaving a shell shocked Lieutenant behind, and the rest of the staff laughing uproariously.

o~o~o

Harry stood outside of the door to the counsellor's office. His finger lightly pressed on the door chime, and a voice cried out "Enter."

As he entered the office he looked around at the spacious, yet cozy room. It was lined with differing chairs - some laid back, some arm chairs, some roman style lazing about chairs. All faced the one oriented towards the door, with Commander Chakotay sitting in it.

"Come in Harry," he said, gesturing towards the array of chairs, "I've been looking forward to this ever since you came on board."

Harry walked across the room, smiling, and sat down in his chair. "So how have you been doing here Harry? It's been just over six months so far, how are you finding being on Voyager?"

"It's been great, it feels like we've really bonded as a family, rather than just a set of crewmates. I think part of that is because I can finally be myself around people."

"What do you mean by that?" Chakotay asked as he keyed something in on his PADD.

"Well, for the vast majority of my career in Starfleet I couldn't tell anyone, or alternatively I could only tell a select few people about being a wizard. It's really freeing that you all know, it makes me feel included, you know? I haven't felt that in some time"

"Tell me about it, when was the last time you felt included?"

"I'm sorry Chakotay, but I don't want to go into it, it's a painful memory." Harry looked down, "I know you're trying to help, but, yeah I don't want to talk about it now."

"Fair enough Harry. Moving on." Chakotay looked at his PADD. "Are you enjoying you new rank of Agent? I've been speaking to people in Section 31 and they told me this was a recent thing."

"Yeah, I'm enjoying it. It's strange to have more responsibility again, for all I'm good at leadership I think I've shied away from it at times because of wanting to help others lead instead. The sensor array is also very cool. I can't wait for the boffins at HQ to come up with a way to let non-magicals use it."

"Interesting. Tell me about it Harry, what's it like using the array?"

"It's a hybrid interface. Partially done through the mind magics, and partially through the tactile interface. It took a little while to get used to, connecting to a computer rather than a mind, but with practice it feels pretty natural now."

"One thing Section 31 is working on in conjunction with Starfleet medical is a nanite interface to bridge the gap between the brain and computer hardware. How do you feel about that?" Chakotay asked.

"I'm a bit dubious, but also excited about the potential uses. It would give the ability to store databases worth of information inside people's heads, allow for instant communication ship or even fleet wide and give us a real shot at being able to take the next leap evolutionary speaking."

"The problem I have with it," Harry leaned forward and looked intently in Chakotay's eyes, "Is that the potential for abuse is too high. If someone got into that computer system and it was able to effect change in the body or brain then it will eventually be used against the people that have it on."

"You're right Harry, that's why they're developing it for now as a view/interact only device. So you can send commands and get information back, but that's it. Viewing the information is like viewing a video. Do you think you're likely to get one implanted when they are created?"

"It depends if I like the idea when they come out. I'm still a bit wary of implants in my body."

"They've figured a way with this of keeping the entire communicator in your body with this technology. So this is a viable way of avoiding the 'take their communicators away' problem. Also, a limited tricorder has been implanted successfully as well, so passive scanning will be possible with this, which again would lead to a lot of benefits if anyone is taken against their will."

"OK, I hadn't heard that," Harry trailed off, and looked around the room, thinking. "OK. In light of that I'll take the implant when it comes. It would be nice to have more than just my senses in a pinch, especially if I have to use magic."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, when I use magic to sense, then fire spells, it bleeds most of the magic from the sensing part, so it's less effective. It would be nice to have something that's not effected by magic."

"Excellent, I'll let them know you've volunteered," Chakotay grinned, "Apparently Voyager is going to be part of the initial rollout, so we'll get to iron out the bugs."

Harry nodded, a serious look on his face. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Moving on again." Chakotay said, again pawing at his PADD. "Roster's all good?" Harry nodded. "Any grievances with your crewmates?" Harry shook his head.

"Do you have anything you want to ask me?" Chakotay asked.

"Yes, how did the first officer of a Starship also become the counsellor? It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense."

"This is experimental Harry," Chakotay answered, "As you know a lot of what voyager is and does is experimental. The first ship to get intentionally sent to the Delta Quadrant, the first ship to break the news about wizards to the crew, the first ship to have the new active sensor array, bioneural gel packs, and so on."

Chakotay looked pensive. "What Starfleet medical has realized over the years is that the Counsellor role and first officer role aren't always mutually exclusive. So first officers have to deal with personnel problems right?" Harry nodded.

"Well, what if that personnel problem was caused by a personal problem?" Chakotay grinned along with Harry. Both chuckled.

"OK, joking aside the traditional way of dealing with this was for the first officer to refer them to the Counsellor, then that's basically it. Unless they asked the crewmember about how it went they wouldn't really have any insights into what was going on. This meant that over time there was a disconnect between the first officer and the crew. The same disconnect that happens between the crew and the Captain as well."

"Starfleet decided on Voyager to try and deal with this in a new way. Because of my background I have more education than most first officers. I enjoy the leadership but also social anthropology which is why I took courses relating to that in Starfleet Academy. The other thing is the Voyager has a more limited crew than most ships, so it makes sense to double up on roles where possible."

"That's really interesting Chakotay," Harry said. "Now that you've explained it it makes sense, but I never saw an issue with the old system. Is Starfleet studying whether you doing both of these roles makes you less effective a leader?"

"Yes, there's a multitude of things they're studying in regards to this, but it's why most of the senior staff have more leadership skills than normal."

"Right, there's just one more thing Harry." Chakotay said.

"You look excited, Commander," Harry said, at the look on Chakotay's face.

"I am. As you know I have a native american background. Well after conversing with Section 31 we discovered that our finding of our spirit animal is a little bit magical. It's a mutation we have in our genome that allows interaction with the higher dimensions enough to tap into it and create our spirit animal, our guiding spirit." Harry leaned forward, looking intrigued.

"What they found is that our methods of finding this animal and communicating with it is like."

"Finding your animagus!" Harry blurted out. "Seriously?" Chakotay nodded. "Fucking finally, so they think it will work for me?"

"Yes, they're very confident that it will work for you Harry." Chakotay smiled. "We can start working on that in future sessions if you are keen?"

"Fuck yeah, I've been trying to do this for most of my life so of course I'm interested."

Chakotay stood up. "Thanks for coming Harry, I'll send some material over to you so that you get the general idea of the procedure before we start it next session. Is that okay?"

Harry smiled, standing. "Sounds awesome. Thanks Chakotay."

As he walked out of the room you could hear him mutter, "Animagus, here I come."


	5. Chapter 5

"Captain, I'm picking up interesting readings 1 million kilometers starboard" HK said, looking at his console.

"What sort of interesting readings Ensign?" Janeway asked, looking over at him.

"It looks like some sort of subspace eddy, perhaps a wormhole."

"Lieutenant Paris, change course to get us within short range sensor abilities," She ordered, "HK, Harry, start running active scans of the phenomenon."

"Captain, we are in position," Paris said a few moments later.

"My scans are complete, it shows some interesting results," Harry said, "It's definitely a wormhole, however there's a temporal aspect to it."

"Can we at least know where it leads before we pass it onto Starfleet?" Janeway looked at Harry, curiosity in her eyes.

"Of course. Potter to Kes, please report to the bridge."

"You're calling in Kes for this?" Tuvok said, "I thought your scanners would have been able to tell us about this wormhole."

"They can tell us it goes into the past, however I would rather us not mess with the space-time continuum as much as we can."

The turbolift doors swished open and Kes stepped out in a Starfleet science uniform, she walked down towards Harry, and sat down on the seat next to him.

"Kes, we have a temporal element to the wormhole. I need you to look into other realities to see where this leads to."

Kes's eyes closed, the bridge crew looking on expectantly. After a few moments she opened them, looking at the Captain.

"It leads into the past, approximately 20 years. We would have come into contact with a Romulan vessel. Interestingly, in this alternate timeline half of the crew were called Maquis, some sort of resistance fighters and the crew were forced to work together. Chakotay was their leader," she looked pointedly at Harry.

He took over. "We've seen this before while exploring alternate realities with Kes Captain, there seems to be one dominant alternate reality she can tap into which doesn't have any wizards, and Voyager is trapped in the delta quadrant instead of in this reality where we have a way both forward and back."

"That's fascinating. Is there any way we can contact them? Have we learned anything from them?" Chakotay asked, leaning forward.

"In that reality Voyager was flung into the Delta quadrant by accident, not by design. They were chasing some freedom fighters called the Maquis into the Badlands. The freedom fighters were federation citizens who were fighting the Cardassians after a treaty put their colonies on the wrong side of the border." Kes said.

"Unlike here, where the Federation had wizarding input towards their laws and ideals," Harry picked up, "in that reality they abandoned the colonies across the Cardassian border. This lead to a lot of strife in that area, leading to the formation of the Maquis, a splinter group of Federation and Starfleet citizens dedicated to freedom of their colonies from Cardassian rule. Apart from that, interestingly a lot of other events in history played out the same, or very similarly. It's like there's some sort of cosmic rubber band, pulling realities on the same path, it's something my people are looking into in conjunction with Starfleet and the Ocampans."

"In that reality, Voyager," Kes started, "has no contact with Starfleet, they had to destroy the Caretaker's array so it didn't fall into the Kazon's hands, and they were unable to cure him. In that reality he was dying of old age, and not radiation poisoning like in ours. The Maquis and Voyager crew joined up to travel back to earth, a 70,000 light year journey."

"It's a fantastic power, but it has its limitations like mine, Captain." Harry said. "She can only see into the immediate present, which includes a little of the past and future but not much. That's why we aren't really able to warn of much more than what may happen immediately."

"I think in time Kes may be able to inhabit more than one reality at the same time. Perhaps even get the ability to do more than just view what happens there. Really, the Ocampan's powers are different to ours in a way we've never encountered before."

"Fascinating." Tuvok said.

Outside of Voyager there was a shimmering of space, and a vessel emerged from the background. It was a sleek ship, spear shaped, with the typical nacelles on the rear of the spear head."

"Red Alert!" Janeway said as she saw the ship decloak on screen. "Shields up."

The bridge was awash in the red light of the alert and the noise of the sirens washed over everyone before it pulled itself back down to background noise.

"Report." Janeway barked out.

"Captain, the power output from the vessel is massive," HK said, "It's on a starbase level or higher."

"Captain, we're being hailed." Tuvok said.

"On screen."

A woman appeared on screen, wearing a similar uniform to the Captain's. Red stripe on the top, and black below, bordered with a soft grey. Pips on her collar the same as Starfleet. Behind and around her was a normal looking bridge.

"Hello, Captain Janeway." She said, a small smile on her face. "I'm Captain Acanit of the Federation starship Continuum." She looked at Harry, and smiled, splitting her face. "Hey Harry."

Janeway turned to look at Harry, "You know her?"

"Yes," He answered, looking at the screen. "She's part of the temporal bureau of Section 31. We've worked together before."

"I've known him for a while Captain, let's just say that. We'll take over the wormhole from here. It will be collapsed due to its potential impact on the timelines."

"What do we put in our logs, and our official report?" Tuvok piped up from the tactical station, a frown on his face.

"Put what happened in your logs. I will transmit a verification code to you to put there so that Starfleet can verify what you say. This is nothing new, Lieutenant Tuvok, we've seen you before, in the future."

"So we will see you again. What sort of time manipulation happens to get your attention?" Janeway asked, a curious look upon her face. "Do you always come before the matter, or after? How do you know where to go?"

Acanit laughed, "Aah Captain, you know we have a saying about you in our line of work. Suffice it to say that we get there when we get there, and not a moment too soon or late."

"We'll see you yesterday." She said, as her image cut off the screen, and the viewscreen showed the ship fading into the aether.

The Captain looked at Harry, "Do all meetings with her go like this?" She inquired, looking put out.

He smiled. "Yeah, pretty much. You get used to the confusing nature of their interactions with those of us in a normal timestream. I've seen her when she's old, and when she's very young. Their encounters with us, and ours with them are rarely linear."

"Captain, the wormhole is gone." HK said, looking up from his console. "It is no longer registering on my scans."

"On screen." Janeway said, and looked as the image of the wormhole evaporating into the surrounding space, sending out blue tendrils from the location where it used to be.

"Did we get any scans of what happened?"

"Yes, but all they show is the wormhole simply dissipating." HK said, looking down.

"Harry, did your scans reveal anything about the denaturing of the wormhole?"

"Yes Captain, but unfortunately I can't tell you what they were."

"Why?"

"The temporal prime directive."

She frowned. "Very well. Continue on our course Lieutenant Paris." And she sat down on her chair heavily.

o~o~o

"So tell me Kes, how are your studies going?" Joe asked as Kes sat opposite him in his office.

"Very well. I've passed everything up to second year according to the tests the computer gave me."

"Already? We knew your people were fast learners, but to learn that in just seven months is astonishing. Your people have immense potential, Kes."

She blushed and looked down, then back up again. "Doctor, why are you giving me this training and not Agent Potter? I thought he had gone through the same training and passed it."

"You're right, he has. I'm doing it because I'm one of Starfleet's foremost medical experts. I have access to gigaquads of data on everything medicine related, both wizarding medicine and non-wizard medicine. I can also generate spells due to my unique physiology, so once your theory is more rounded we will go onto the practical applications of what you've read. I'm also part of a large research group whose aim is to combine the higher dimensional energy of magic, and particularly its healing spells with traditional medicine to improve the abilities of both, so I'm uniquely placed to give you the best well rounded training in medicine. It's also because Agent Potter is extremely busy, and he has learned to delegate responsibility."

"That makes sense," Kes said, nodding her head. "Do we have to wait to do the practical elements of medical care until after I've learnt the theory? I feel like I'm ready to jump in now, Doctor." She said nodding eagerly.

"Unfortunately, yes Kes." The doctor's face was solemn. "What humanity and many other species have found over the years Kes is that starting practical medicine before getting a solid grounding in theory leads to reinforcing of wrong ideas. Because things are a certain way you might get the wrong idea in your head about why they are that certain way, which makes it harder to learn the right way, since you have to unlearn the wrong way first."

Kes's eyes uncrossed. "So what you're saying is I have to wait?" She stuck her bottom lip out in a pout, and crossed her arms. "Well, poop."

o~o~o

A gas giant with a ring of asteroids around it filled the viewscreen. The blue and orange shades of the planet filled the bridge with a cool light, illuminating the crew as they watched the approach.

"Ensign Kim, have we been able to pinpoint the source of the new element?"

"Affirmative Captain, the sensors show it's in many of the asteroids."

"Excellent." Janeway smiled. "This is the 247th element to be discovered by the federation, let's find out what it looks like. Commander, take an away team to discern the element's nature, and do bring me back a sample would you? I'd like to have a look at it."

"Aye, Captain." Chakotay said as he stood up, and motioned towards HK and Tuvok. The three got off the bridge onto the turbolift.

"Harry, are you able to determine anything more about this element from here?" Janeway looked over at him questioningly.

"At the moment I am running scans. I'm getting interesting readings from the asteroids themselves, but also there's also some sort of energy permeating the rings of this planet the asteroids are in Captain, my scans aren't making much sense of them at the moment however. I'll get back to you once I have more."

o~o~o

Inside a dank cave on the asteroid, a blue and white glow appeared in three sections, and the cave walls lit up in response. Out of the glow Chakotay, HK and Tuvok appeared, holding phasers.

The cave was lined by a spider web-like substance, stuck to every surface.

"There doesn't seem to be any immediate threat Commander." Tuvok stated, looking at his tricorder.

"Commander, I think I've found what we're looking for." Harry said amazed, looking around and then back at his tricorder. "It seems to be that the webbing all around us is made of the new element."

"OK. Be careful. Let's have a look and see if we can't determine what's causing the webbing. Take active scans of everything. We'll grab a sample once complete."

The three wandered around the cave system. Room after room was the same, webbing across all surfaces. Interestingly, none of it stuck to their boots, it was like it was attracted to the cave surface.

"Uhh, Chakotay, you'd better come look here." EK said as he stepped into an archway leading to a new room.

They walked over. "Bodies." Tuvok said. Decomposing bodies, oddly with no smell were lined up on the floor of the cavern. All faced the same way, flat on the ground.

The three of them walked over to the nearest body, webbing was starting to form on the being's skin.

Kim crouched down and waved his tricorder over the alien. "Commander, it looks like the webbing comes from these aliens. This one is in a state of decay where its skin seems to be turning into the webbing. Doesn't that mean?" He looked up at the commander and Tuvok.

"Yes, it appears we're in a burial ground." Chakotay said. "We've also been stepping on their remains." He said grimly as he tapped his comm badge. "Chakotay to voyager, Captain come in."

"Janeway here." Her voice crackled through the comm.

"Captain, it looks like we've come across some sort of alien burial ground, perhaps a tomb. It looks like the aliens bury their dead here. From what EK's scans show, their bodies break down into a webbing made of the new element we detected."

"With your permission Captain I would recommend we leave now, and don't take a sample back. I would hate to disturb a people's burial site."

"Permission granted. We will beam you up now. Stand by."

The comm went dead, and there was a swirl of light as the transporters engaged and the three men beamed out of the cave."

Back on Voyager, in the transporter room the operator smoothly handled the controls as the pads lit up and the beams of light engaged. Once the beaming procedure had finished however, they knew something was wrong.

"What happened?" Chakotay asked, looking at the ensign, then back down at the body dressed like the aliens on the surface. Where's Harry?"

"I don't know commander," Seska said, frantically tapping their controls, "I'm running a diagnostic now. It looks like the sensor lock worked fine, there's ensign kim still. Then the beaming emitters fired up and, oh." she looked up at the Commander, confusion on her face.

"Between when the sensor lock confirmed and the transporter emitters lit up Ensign Kim was lost from sensors, and someone else took his place."

"I've never heard of that happening before, have you, Tuvok?" Chakotay asked.

"No." Tuvok raised an eyebrow. "I have never heard of this happening."

"OK, let's see if we can't get some answers." Chakotay said as he and Tuvok walked back to the transporter pad. "Three to beam to sick bay."

o~o~o

Janeway confidently walked into Sick Bay, Agent Potter in tow. She glanced at the alien in the main biobed and raised an eyebrow, looking at the Doctor, Chakotay and Tuvok crowded around the biobed. "Gentlemen, report."

"Captain." Joe started, "The female alien who took HK's place in the transport was recently deceased, from a brain aneurism. I performed the standard class-5 resuscitation procedure, and replicated replacement neural tissue for her. I have kept her sedated as we run further tests."

"And what of the transporter accident? What happened there?" She asked, looking at Chakotay and Harry.

"It looks like the sensor lock onto Ensign Kim was actually a lock on a subspace vacuole Captain. The vacuole deposited the female alien while taking EK through the rupture at the same time." Harry paused. "We've run further surface scans, and it appears vacuoles are appearing all over the asteroid belt in irregular amounts. We've seen more happen closer to us recently however."

"Are you saying we're attracting these vacuoles, Agent?" Janeway said, looking towards Chakotay in concern.

"Yes, that's correct. B'Elanna and I are looking into it, and we have a theory which we need to test."

"So where's Kim then?" The Captain asked, frowning.

"It looks like he's wherever these people are coming from." Chakotay said. "It's fascinating that these people seem to appear here on the moment of their death. It's almost like this is their afterlife."

"Yes, fascinating," she said primly. "How do we get Kim back?" She asked.

"Unknown at this time, Captain." Harry answered. "I'm running scans with the array and Kes has tried to access the other dimensions' timelines to see if any answers are there, but we have nothing so far but rumor and guesswork. I am attempting to scan any vacuoles however considering the random nature of the anomaly we can't guarantee the when we will get a good solid scan."

"OK. Keep looking then. Dismissed." With that, Agent Potter left the room, overhearing, "Now Doctor, can you wake her? I'd like to get answers," from the Captain

o~o~o

In an unknown location, Ensign Kim appeared in a small room. He looked around at the smooth stone walls thinking to himself 'this isn't Voyager.'

As he completed the thought, one of the walls split into two and opened up into a yellow and silver decorated room with a single person in a grey robe and a greyer hat on their human-like head.

Their eyebrows disappeared into their hairline as they saw Kim in the room, walking out. Harry looked at the woman as he walked into the unfamiliar room.

"Where am I?" he asked, looking around the room. There was a single computer console in the room, which the woman stood in front of, gripping the edges of, her knuckles turning as white as her face.

"I mean you no harm." Harry said, raising both hands in a placating gesture. "I should be somewhere else. Do you know how I got here?"

She shook her head, eyes wide.

"Could you please contact someone who might know?" He asked gently, slowly reaching for his tricorder. Grabbing it he asked "Do you mind if I scan with some of my equipment to see if I can get an idea of what happened?" She shook her head, and looking away started furiously tapping away at the console. He walked back into the room, starting scanning to see if he could work out what was happening, furious whispers coming from behind him.

A few minutes later, and no closer to answers except that the small grey room was some sort of transmission and receiving station for people, with some medical functionality built in he heard the doors of the brightly lit room open, and people came in.

He turned around to see a woman in white robes, but still a grey hat with two men flanking her, carrying weapons. The technician at the station in the center of the room looked relieved at the reinforcements.

"Who are you, and what are you doing in our cenotaph?" She demanded.

"My name is Harry Kim, from the starship Voyager. I appeared here instead of on my ship while investigating a new element found in an asteroid belt around a gas giant."

The woman walked up to Harry, looking up at his face. "Are you here from the next emanation to judge us? I won't have your appearance here cause unrest amongst my people." Her face was hard as stone. "Take him away until we decide what to do with him." The two guards grabbed Harry and disarmed him as they dragged him towards the door.

"Wait, what do you mean the next emanation?" He asked as he was pulled towards the door while struggling, his voice fading as the doors closed on him.

In the room, the woman in white looked at the technician. "Speak of this to no-one." She said as she swished out of the room.

As the doors closed the woman in white missed the technician reach for her console again, and start whispering.

o~o~o

On board Voyager, the alien woman was given a hypospray by the Doctor, her eyes fluttering awake to see Janeway, the Doctor, and Chakotay standing over the bed.

"Where am I?" She asked groggily, rubbing her eyes as she sat up. "Is this the next emanation? It's different from what I expected. Where's my brother?" She looked around wildly, as if to try and find him.

She was stopped by the Doctor resting his hand on her shoulder, "You're onboard the starship Voyager. We found you on an asteroid and revived you." He said gently. "What is the next emanation?" He asked.

Chakotay said, "The afterlife," at the same time as the woman. Janeway looked at him for a few moments before looking back at the woman.

"My name is Captain Kathryn Janeway. I am the captain of this ship. I'm sorry to tell you this isn't the afterlife, we found you as the Doctor said on an asteroid and revived you. What's your name?" She smiled gently, trying to put the alien at ease.

"Ptera." The woman said, looking down. She looked up again, directly at the Captain. "If this isn't the Next Emanation then how do I get there?"

This question caused the three Starfleet officers to look at each other, not knowing what to say.

o~o~o

Harry sat in a small cell on the bench seat, looking out of the bars. As far as he could see, even though it wasn't a force field holding him but metal there was no way out. He was interrupted from his thoughts of escape by the door opening and the technician from earlier coming in.

"Quick, come with me, we don't have much time," She said as she motioned towards the door and took off.

He didn't think, just acted and followed her. She led him through many corridors, turned numerous corners, up and down and all over. All his attempts at questions were sushed aggressively.

After a while of running they came across a craggy grey stone wall, and they paused in front of it before she activated a small device she pulled out of a pocket and the wall disappeared. She entered the new doorway and Harry's eyebrows raised as he followed her. After a few minutes of walking instead of running through an extensive cave system they came across another door which she opened with the same device.

Inside was another woman with most of the same features working on a similar console to the one in the first room Harry had seen in this place. She looked up and smiled. "Aah, come in, come in. You must be confused," She said, looking at the question on Harry's face.

"Yes ma'am, I am. Why did you break me out of that holding cell?" He turned to the technician, who was standing slightly away from him, looking at his face. "You seemed so shocked earlier, and you have such confidence now, what happened?" He asked, a blush slowly forming on the woman's face.

"I was surprised. I have only seen people go into the cenotaph, not come out of it." She said. "Then when the intendant came I had to act cowed, else I'd blow my cover."

"Your cover?" Kim asked as he sighed. "What have I gotten myself into here?"

"Your coming has presented us with a unique opportunity. You can tell us what lies beyond the cenotaph, in the Next Emanation. What's on the other side?" The woman at the console peered at him, as if she could digest knowledge better with her eyes furrowed.

"We were exploring a region of space when we detected a new element. We came across an asteroid belt around a gas giant, and went to investigate. While on the surface we saw what looks like your people covered in webbing. We beamed out so as not to disturb your possible burial rites and customs. After that, I appeared in the grey room." He said professionally.

The two women looked at him, then at each other. "You mean to say there's a world behind the cenotaph that isn't the afterlife?" The technician asked, eyes wide.

"Well, as far as I can deduce from my scans and what you've said the cenotaph transports people from your world to the asteroids we were investigating. Considering your name for the device it transports your dead?" He asked, looking at each of them.

Stunned, the woman at the console said, "Yes, the device is used to euthanize people before transporting them to the Next Emanation."

Harry paused and looked intently at the woman. "Could you please repeat that?"

o~o~o

"The cenotaph euthanizes people before sending them to the Next Emanation, or the afterlife as you said." Ptera said to the shocked looks of the three Starfleet officers surrounding her.

"Ptera, your brain aneurism wasn't treatable by your people, correct?" Joe asked her, a frown on his holographic face.

"That's right. In our society if we know we are to die we go to the cenotaph to be transported to the next emanation."

"So it's only your sick then?" Chakotay asked, leaning forward.

"And our elderly." She paused, "And people who don't want to live any more."

As her two officers looked at her with horror on their faces Katherine couldn't quite hold her own look of disquiet off her face. "You, you allow people to commit suicide? And they are guaranteed a place in the afterlife?" She asked, trying to keep the judgement off her face. She obviously didn't succeed as a flash of anger came over Ptera's face.

"Of course we do," her face contorted, "It's their choice, and they are a blight on society anyway," She spat, "The elderly take up valuable resources, and if people don't want to live any more then they should move on to allow others opportunities."

o~o~o

"So what about disabled people, and people who have accidents where they don't fully recover - are they 'encouraged,'" here Harry threw up air quotes, "to be euthanized as well?"

"Yes," the technician said, looking uncomfortable, but she looked towards the woman manning the console, "but that's what we're trying to stop here" she blurted out emphatically, "and you can help us."

"Help you do what? Reshape your entire society? We're not supposed to interfere with another civilization's development, even if it _is_ allowed in extreme cases." He said, still standing uncomfortably straight.

"Harry, don't you understand? Not all of our society want this. We don't want to be discarded or euthanized because we're less than perfect. People are being talked into this, when we get old or sick our families encourage travelling here, to end things the," she spat out the word, "dignified way. We are a burden, a curse." She stepped out from behind the console, Harry's eyes immediately drawn to her stump of a leg, supported by a crude metal limb.

"Please, help us Harry. There's many more than just us, living in areas where we can't be found, in facilities like this, in the wilderness. We feel like we're forced into death."

Harry stared at her, a blank look on his face. He looked over at the technician, his first encounter with these people and saw someone defeated.

"Why did you," he started, looking at the technician, "man the station in the cenotaph room if you disagreed with the very principle of what you were doing?"

"We wanted to try to find a way of disabling it, of stopping the process. Maybe visiting the world behind without the killing being necessary. Maybe bringing someone back who lived over there who everyone knew." She looked at him intently. "It was better than doing nothing, gathering information."

Harry nodded. "If you can get me back my tricorder I may be able to get back, and if I do I will talk to my people about your plight. I would do more here, but it feels wrong somehow, and I'm only one man."

The smiles of the two women let Harry Kim think he was doing the right thing.

o~o~o

Back on Voyager, Harry Potter was looking at his sensor array distrustfully. He was in his lab, with Kes next to him, both of them connecting their magic to the scanning array trying to diagnose what the energy field around the asteroid belt was, where the vacuoles were coming from, and how to get Harry back.

He jumped in surprise as a triumphant yell came from next to him, Kes turned to him with bright eyes. "I did it! I figured it out Harry," she laughed.

He looked at her and smiled, the information snaking into his head through the connection to the sensor array. As it did his eyes widened to their maximum, his eyebrows comically dancing with his hairline.

He looked at Kes again, this time a serious look on his face. "We have to see the Captain, now." He said as they got up and raced towards the Captain in sick bay.

o~o~o

The discussion with Ptera over, the Captain, Chakotay and the Doctor were conversing in the Doctor's office. "So what's your opinion on this Chakotay, I know you have the most background in anthropology than anyone here." She asked, leaning back in her seat.

"Given her words, inflection and mannerisms I'd say she comes from an extremely ordered society. People generally follow orders, there is probably a sub-group within their people with opposing views, but she didn't say about those - they're potentially religious, indoctrination from birth, but that's not really different from any other culture." He thought for a moment. "They are technically less advanced than us, at least medically considering we easily treated her ailment, but in transporting technology much more advanced considering they get their dead here somehow. Given her lack of surprise at us looking different from her maybe they have met aliens either in the far past or more recent, but I'd say they're pre-warp."

"Surely a lot of that is speculation, Commander?" The doctor asked, looking between Chakotay and the Captain.

"Yes, of course it is." Chakotay sighed. "The problem with anthropology is you can pretty much only make assumptions, even with compelling evidence. We would need to question Ptera more to find out what her society is like to be able to draw any actual conclusions, and even then they are biased towards her point of view."

Janeway raised her hands. "Thanks Chakotay, I think that was a good synopsis for now. The question is, what do we do with her?"

The two other officers were saved from answering by Harry and Kes's entrance into sick bay, they immediately beelined towards the three, sparing a small glance to the now sleeping Ptera in the biobed.

"Captain, Commander, Doctor. We know what the energy reading around the asteroids are, and what the vacuoles are as well."

"Go on, agent," Katherine said, looking curiously at Harry and Kes.

"Do you?" Harry gestured, looked at Kes. She nodded.

"The energy readings around the asteroids are souls, Captain." She said as the three officer's eyebrows took a vacation to hairline land.

"What we detected was a soul matrix comprised of potentially hundreds of millions of souls, using the gravitational energy from the gas giant as an anchor point."

Harry took over. "While we were scanning a few vacuoles formed, three to be precise. I focused on those. What I saw is the aliens arriving dead, their souls slowly seeping out to join the matrix of souls."

"Now that we have the readings we can open a vacuole from our side and step through into Ptera's world. We should be able to find Harry, and return Ptera to her family."

He paused at the looks on the three faces around him. "What's happened?"

Joe spoke up. "It seems their people regularly practice euthanasia, the vacuoles depositing their dead is doing so after these people are euthanized."

"Of course Doctor, they have to be dead to join the soul matrix. What's the problem here?" He looked around before saying "oh", a sheepish look on his face.

"I sometimes forget I'm not in the wizarding world," He said to the curious looks on their faces. "You need to remember in our world we have the ability to determine intent and truthfulness. That's essential to our mind healers, our court system, police, etcetera. We have much longer life spans than you, wizards living to 250 years old is common now, back when I was born it was around 180 years."

"To a wizard, the afterlife is seen as the next great adventure, to quote one of my old teachers." He smiled fondly. "But even with magic there are curses that resist even the most ardent healer. There are people who resist the treatments of the best potions, the most zealous mind healers. Some people want or need to die. Long ago the wizarding world put in laws, checks and balances to ensure this could not be abused."

"But it's their choice at the end of the day, even if there are some who are against it and would never be euthanized, raging against pain and agony until they are dragged kicking and screaming into the aether, some don't want that pain, they don't have that fight in them. It's considered a right, but not a duty to be euthanized in our society."

"So, can you help Ptera get back, and get HK back for us?" Katherine asked quietly, shocked at Harry's revelations.

"Yes Captain, opening a portal will be simple enough. I will go right now." He turned and walked towards the biobed, the air warping around him, tinging purple around the edges. He reached the biobed and touched Ptera and the two exploded into a purple nothingness, the room stretching back to normal in the wake of the spell he used.

"Kes." Katherine looked at her, "Do your people think like Harry's do?" She asked.

"No, our people would never dream of wasting our 10 years of life, but remember Captain the Caretaker looks after my people, and our medical science is advanced. Maybe if we lived longer we might have considered it, but I think it never came up like it did for the wizards." She shrugged, and grimaced. "To be honest, it freaks me out, the idea of taking your own life rather than fighting for survival. I think it goes against our very nature as beings, and given what I've read of medical text from the federation it goes against the nature of pretty much anything alive to choose to end their own existence."

The Captain nodded. "I'm... glad that it seems distasteful to more than just me. Gentlemen?" She turned to the two officers. "What about you?"

"Well, I was created by a wizard but I don't have an in-depth repository of their laws, I didn't know about this before today." The doctor said with some hesitation. "I don't know what to think really. There's a reason why Starfleet allows it but only in extreme cases and under heavy review before anything gets done. I don't know Captain, I just hope I'm never in that situation."

"My people are for it." Chakotay said reticently, to surprised looks from the others. "Some members of my family have chosen their death days, but the deliberations on their choices are great. I personally would like to choose my death day, but Ptera's people." He sighed, "It seems their modus operandi is to cut people down as soon as they are no longer useful. Better to replace than repair. I think their society is flawed."

Their discussion was interrupted by a compression in the biobed room as the walls curved inwards. After a moment they popped back out, green light streaming from the center point leaving four people looking no worse for wear.

"Aah, Captain, hello." Harry said jovially, HK talking quietly to the two woman with him. "We need to talk with Starfleet with these two lovely ladies. I've gone and interfered with their society." He said happily.

The Captain facepalmed. This was going to be a fun discussion.

o~o~o

Around the meeting room sat Harry, HK, the two women from the other side of the cenotaph, and the Captain.

"Report, Captain." The baritone voice of the bearded sea-captain-like admiral on the screen rang out.

Janeway sitting up ramrod straight in her chair started talking. "Admiral, we encountered a new element in this system, and so decided to investigate. The element was found in the cave systems in the asteroids in the system, secreted from the dead bodies of a species we now know are called the Vhnori."

"When beaming out in order to not disturb their burial rites a subspace vacuole opened and transported Ensign Kim here through to the Vhnori's planet. In his place was a recently deceased woman, named Ptera. We revived her and found the Vhnori practice ritual euthanasia, through a device they call the cenotaph. Agent Potter here found out how to replicate the vacuole transport and took Ptera back home."

"Agent, could you please take over from here?" The Captain asked, looking at Harry.

"Aye Captain," he replied, glancing her way, then looking at the admiral on the screen. "When I arrived with Ptera on the Vhnori homeworld we came to in a room which had Ensign Kim and the two Vhnori women you see here. They had freed him after their leaders imprisoned the Ensign for what his presence may mean for their society. They were attempting to disable the euthanasia part of the transportation to get him back with no success before I got there."

Harry sighed. "Their society Admiral is collapsing from within due to the cenotaph. A large portion of people have been forced to choose euthanasia due to pressure from their families and society. I decided to use my initiative and put up some intent-based wards to stop this from happening. If the person in the cenotaph was forced in there involuntarily, or was pressured into it then the device won't activate."

"Then after that, we came back with them. Oh, and what Kes and I found out was there's an energy field surrounding the 'asteroids of the dead' which is actually a soul matrix containing the souls of all the dead who have died and come through the cenotaph."

"I will let Layta say why they are here." Harry gestured towards the woman with the missing leg.

"Hello Admiral" she said, nodding. "There are thousands of us who want to leave our society, we would like to request amnesty. To not be pressured into dying when disabled or what our society deems as useless is what we want for our lives, and living on our world in isolation is not living enough. The 'regressives' as they call us are hunted down and forced to go into the chamber. Thank you for listening," she nodded again, as she looked towards the other woman with hope in her eyes.

"Thank you all, I appreciate the summarizing of the report for me. I've consulted with the Federation diplomacy team about this, and we have agreed to take on however many members of your society who want to get out."

The exuberant smiles on the women's faces lit up the room.

"I am also assigning a team of scientists and Section 31 wizards to investigate this phenomenon. A soul matrix like this has a number of interesting possibilities i've been informed. We will be stationing two ships here to perform research, and also to assist in any Vhnori who would like to leave. We will set up permanent facilities in one of the asteroid's tunnel systems so that the Vhnori who decide to leave their home planet aren't stripped of their right to their 'Next Emanation.'"

"Agent, we are satisfied with your temporary measure to stop the wholesale slaughter of an undesirable part of the Vhnori society, and we will work with the leadership there to ensure they know of the restriction on the cenotaph. The USS Von Braughan will rendezvous with you in two days to take on the two passengers you have."

"After that, you will be cleared to resume your explorations. Any questions?" He looked around the room to find none. "Good work people," He smiled. "Jackson out."

o~o~o

A/N: Thanks for reading. Also thanks to the few people who have written reviews, especially Joe Lawyer who said things were a bit confusing in regards to the maquis not existing in this alternate universe. There may be inconsistencies for things that happened in previous chapters, and for that I apologize. If I was writing this whole story before posting (rather than chapter by chapter) I'd go back and edit it but this is more about me trying to be disciplined enough to write and post rather than never posting it. If you find things are fucked up or confusing in the story then please leave a review letting me know.

Also, Ex Post Facto doesn't happen because Voyager no longer need to repair equipment so they never seek out the Banean scientist who kills his wife. The husband gets charged for the crime like he did in canon, but Voyager wasn't involved.


	6. Chapter 6

"Captain, I am detecting a general distress call," Ensign Kim said, "On heading 020 mark 4."

"Tom, set in a course," Janeway ordered.

A few minutes later in space Voyager slammed into existence from out of warp. Near her was another ship, circular in shape and much smaller.

"Tuvok, hail the vessel," the Captain said as she stood up.

An older man appeared on the view screen, a brightly lit room behind him. "Good day, I am Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation starship Voyager. You sent out a distress call?"

"Yes Captain," He said exuberantly , face breaking out into a massive grin. "But it is not us who are in distress, but you." he exclaimed, causing incredulous looks to emerge out on the Starfleet officer's faces as they looked at him.

"My name is Gathorel, and let me assure you," He said to the looks on their faces. "We knew you were here and no others. We thought doing this would be an amusing way of introducing ourselves, was it not?" The smile faded from his face.

The Captain looked at Tuvok, then back at the alien. "We were surprised Gathorel, normally when we get distress calls it's because someone's actually in distress, not trying to just get our attention. You could have hailed us to get our attention," She chastised him.

"Fair enough." He nodded, but no shame glazed his face. "Our people have heard of you, our space has never been safer since you came here into our quadrant and dealt with races like the Vidiians." He lost his flippant look and turned serious. "For that, you have our gratitude. Perhaps you'd like to join us on our planet, have some sort of cultural exchange as you rest yourself on our planetary resorts." He bowed his head, and raised it again. "We would be honoured."

"One moment please Gathorel," The Captain said as she motioned to Tuvok, and the beep of the mute function rang out. "Well?" She looked at Chakotay, "What do you think?"

"His offer seems genuine, Captain. It would be a good chance to study the culture of one of the few delta quadrant species we have met so far. I would recommend taking him up on his offer." She nodded as he finished.

"Tuvok?" she asked.

"The vessel has limited armaments, all of which a class-3 shuttle could withstand for centuries. Their power output is limited as well. I believe they pose us no threat."

She motioned towards the viewscreen again, and the unmute sound played. "We would be delighted to take you up on your offer, Gathorel, would you like to lead the way?" She asked.

"Of course, this way please." He said, and the viewscreen went back to showing his ship and the space around it as he took off, voyager following closely behind.

o~o~o

Voyager exited warp and started orbiting the Sikaran planet. It was a beautiful looking planet, vibrant green and blue, with hardly any cloud cover over the whole planet.

On the ship, preparations were being made, Gathorel had invited them to beam down to the planet, so that the crew could begin shore leave.

In a corridor on the ship however, Harry was outside Chakotay's office. He pressed the bell and heard "Come in," from Chakotay.

He entered and sat down at a gesture from the commander.

"So, are you ready Harry?" Chakotay asked. "This may take some time, or it may take very little time at all. Did you get to the assigned reading?"

"Yes, I read all of it. So I'm to use a device your ancestors created in order to get in touch with their spirit animals. This should get me in contact with my animagus form."

"That's correct. Once the device is activated and you go into the trance you will appear in your mind. The first animal you come across is your spirit animal, all you should need to do is touch it."

Chakotay grabbed a leather bag next to him, bound in twine, and gestured towards the mat on the floor as he sunk into it cross-legged. Across from him Harry did the same as the commander unwrapped the bundle between them, the device sitting on the unbound leather next to a stone with markings on it, and a black wing from a bird.

"This is my medicine bundle. The Akoonah," he said pointing at the brown device with a large white pad on it, "is what we use to enter the meditative state. Psychedelic drugs do at a pinch, however this device is far more direct and has none of the lovely side effects. The stone and wing both have meaning to me, and help ground me on my journey."

"Why didn't you ask me to bring items like you have in your bundle?" Harry asked.

"According to our research and test this isn't required for wizards like you with a grounding in occlumency. You already have the grounding required without having a physical object to represent it."

"Are you ready?" Chakotay asked.

"Let's do it." Harry said, a determined look on his face.

"Touch the Akoonah then." Chakotay and Harry's hands touched the now glowing pad of the device.

"A-koo-chee-moya." Chakotay began. "We are far from the sacred places of our grandfathers. We are far from the bones of our people. But perhaps there is a powerful being that will embrace this man to find the other side of him that he seeks."

Harry's eyes closed as the room blackened around him.

o~o~o

He appeared inside a forest. Dressed in white robes he looked around at the trees, trunks larger than houses, trunks stretching up to the sky. Huge gaps around the trees, they stretched out as far as he could see.

"Interesting." He muttered, and started walking, footsteps crunching on dead branches and leaves. As he swivelled his head he realized he could hear nothing. No wind. No animals. Silence.

His eyes narrowed as he broke out into a run, purple tinges of light caressing his limbs as he enhanced them with his magic. Before long he could hear the whistling of air passing his ears, and his eyes watered until he casually threw up a modified bubblehead charm.

The forest blurred into a deluge of browns and greens. The massive trunks all had large gaps between them, they seemed to be lined up uniformly, equidistant from each other. This made his racing through them easy. After some moments, could have been hours or days of running he came across a stone cabin. It stuck out of the nature-filled environment, like a boil on a face.

He cautiously walked around the cabin, inspecting it. There were no windows. The entire cabin was grey and featureless. It was like someone took a crude drawing of a cabin and gave life to it.

After contemplating, Harry opened the door. White exploded at him, and the entire world went white. He could hear his heartbeat as he looked around the featureless environment, expression grim.

Footsteps started from far away, slowly, inevitably coming closer. There was a diamond of light, and in front of him appeared what looked like a man, in a Starfleet captain's uniform. Black hair, craggy face, and a roguish grin on his face as he regarded Harry.

Harry stared at him, a frown marring his face. "I was led to believe I would find my animagus form in here. So far there's been no animals, only an empty forest, and now you. Who are you?"

The being grinned. "I, am Q. Now that you're not hiding from me, I've found you." He exclaimed. "Your Chakotay called for a powerful being, and here I am." his arms widened in a mocking embrace.

o~o~o

"Oh, shit." Harry muttered, to Q's enjoyment. "I'm presuming you're the Q Starfleet has had multiple dealings with over the years. The Q who introduced us to the Borg? The Q who put all of humanity on trial?"

"Yes. I'm that Q" He said magnanimously, smiling. "I took pity on your species and showed them the dangers they were not ready for that existed just in their galaxy."

"So am I to assume then that we're not in my mind, and you've taken me from Chakotay's office to have this lovely talk?" Harry asked, a strange look on his face.

"Correct again!" Q said, raising his arms up in celebration. "You're a quick one, I like that."

"OK Q." Harry sighed. "Why am I here? Surely you didn't bring me here just to chat."

"You're right." Q frowned. "This setting I think is a bit too much. Let's go somewhere a bit more comfortable." and the two disappeared from the white void in two diamonds of light.

o~o~o

The two reappeared back in the cabin Harry came from with his vision. Harry looked around the featureless room and lazily waved his hand. Two red leather chairs appeared from nothing. Q looked shocked.

"Well that answers one of our questions about you," Q said, sitting opposite Harry in one of the chairs. "Hmm, comfortable." he muttered, rubbing the chair's arms.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"We wondered if you would be able to use your 'magic' in a place like this. By all accounts only a Q should have powers here."

Harry stared at Q, then sighed. "Look. I don't really like attention like this. I don't like to be interrogated. You are supposedly 'all powerful,'" he broke out the air quotes, rolling his eyes, "So why don't you just know the answer to that question. If you wanted to know about my powers you could have just used yours to find out, surely?"

Q stared for a moment, eyes slightly narrowed. "The continuum has charged me to communicate with you in order to find out what you are and what you can do. We can't scan you with our powers, you are nothing like the other wizards of your species - we can scan them fine. Obviously we can transport you with our powers, but apart from that it's like you're not even there. Even other Q show up to each other, and there's no way of hiding, unlike you..."

"Put plainly, you're an anomaly. We don't like anomalies. We've gone over your entire life, from birth, to this very point in time and when you were younger you came across artifacts that, like you, elude our sensing abilities. At some point while you were in possession of these artifacts you went dark to our scans. When we were going through your life, it became clear. You're a catalyst, an agent for change."

"Your abilities obscure so much of our sight around you that we can no longer reliably determine future outcomes, just the fact that you're in a particular place means we can no longer predict anything. We can observe you, but only up to this point in time. It's like this until the death of this reality. It's like you're a chaos agent, the universe doesn't really work _properly_ when you're there."

Harry looked at Q, shocked, and then started laughing. Deep, bellowing laughs. At the look on Q's face, shocked, he dove into hysterical laughter. It was many moments until he calmed down.

"Aah, thanks for that," He said, wiping tears from his face. "I needed that. It's good to know that Harry Potter, Universal Spitoon still happens regularly even after this long."

He chuckled for a while, eventually they stopped. A serious look emerged on his face, to match Q's one. "So, to your sensing abilities It's like I don't exist right?"

Q nodded.

"Before I say anything, what are you going to do with me? I'm obviously here because you think I'm dangerous. I've heard the stories from others about your species, Q. You can be cruel as much as fair."

"Nothing, as of yet. The _others_ ," he looked up, "are scared of you, but they weren't the ones to go through your life and examine what makes you tick."

Q stared at Harry intently, unblinking. "And after plucking you from that room on Voyager I know we could end you. I also know you would put up a fight, which would probably decimate the Q. We would win." He sighed. "But the universe would lose. I and some others have done simulations based on your personality and powers, some 'what-ifs' on some things we think are likely to come to be. In all cases we are better off with you there."

"Interesting." Harry said after a pause. "Yeah ok, I'll tell you then."

"Those artifacts are definitely the cause. According to our lore they were called the deathly hallows. They were created by death, and the person who held all three of them would become master of death. As soon as I came into possession of all three of the hallows they went inert, however the power from the three of them moved into my body - after I touched all three, they became nothing but ornaments."

"After that, I noticed many things. I could hide myself at will. Not just become invisible, but it's like I was never there to sensors, cameras, and everything else. I stopped leaving footprints in snow, despite sinking into it. My breath never disturbed the air. I became able to call on the spirits of the dead at will." Here his gaze grew distant. "I lost myself to that for a while. The last thing was that I could now cast magic better than before but without any wand at all."

"I also found myself slow to tire, I always had reserves. I could cast the same spell indefinitely, until I fell asleep from exhaustion. For my wizarding brethren there was a limit, you could only channel so much power before you couldn't any more. Not for me."

"Years after this, my friends and the public in general started questioning why I hadn't aged from that day. They still do. They all think it's just part of being Harry Potter." He grinned wryly. "One advantage of my fame from birth is that it's easy to use the 'I'm Harry Potter' explanation for exactly why I can do things others can't. I survived the killing curse, that seems to be enough answer for most."

"I guess one of the things I can add to the list is being able to hide from the Q." He chuckled.

"Have you ever tried fathering a child, Harry?" Q asked.

Harry looked up hard, and stared. "That seemed too nonchalant, Q. What's brewing in that endless head of yours?"

"Just answer the question."

He sighed. "I've never really wanted to, in case they age and I don't, or potentially worse they don't age but wreak havoc on the universe and I'm forced to put them down. I've had to do that with close friends' relatives and it's heartbreaking. I can't imagine what it would be like to do that with one of my own."

"So you haven't tried out of fear then?" Q asked. Harry's nod was his only answer. A light breeze, a ripping sound, and a _presence_ washed over the two, who both looked up in surprise.

"YOU WHAT?"

o~o~o

Back on Voyager, it was mostly business as usual. Chakotay got questioned, but the consensus became it was the Q who took Harry. A partial search, full scans and magical sensing, and some of his colleagues from Section 31 came to fill in the gap.

The Sikaran planet seemed to hold many wonders, but those soon became lackluster as it was discovered the Sikarans held a high view of novelty, but not much else - the Voyager crew was simply their latest novelty.

Ensign Kim discovered through a tryst with a Sikaran their spatial trajector transporter system, which could send people light years across the galaxy. However it was found this could only operate due to the crystalline core of the planet.

Voyager quickly moved on.

o~o~o

As voyager left Sikaris the bridge was quiet in contemplation. Just after Janeway gave the command to engage the warp drive there was a flash of light, and Harry Potter appeared, along with Q and a woman.

"Captain." Harry nodded, and looked around the bridge to see looks of relief on most faces. Tuvok's was of course as impassive as ever.

"Agent, welcome back. We guessed the Q took you from Chakotay's office, I trust you weren't harmed or bullied in any way?" She sent a glare at Q, who had a look of pure innocence on his face.

"I assure you, Captain Kathy, that no harm came of him, and none will from us." The Captain's eye twitched at the name.

"Captain, if you will allow it, the Q have suggested a secondment of sorts - Quora here would like to join the crew in our exploration of the Delta quadrant, and study wizarding magic under me with her time here."

He sighed. "I will also be studying the Q powers under her - it's part of the arrangement between the Q and I."

Janeway looked at the three of them, a small frown on her face as she contemplated the ramifications of the statement. "Does this mean you will no longer be able to help us in our mission Harry?" she asked gently.

"No ma'am, as long as I stick to wizarding magic then the Q will have no problems with me using my powers. Quora here," he gestured to the petite brunette with cold blue eyes next to him, "will be my liaison to the Q, and has the ability to clear use of Q powers if they deem the situation dire enough."

"Captain," Here Quora stepped forward, blue eyes impassively locked with Janeway. "I am here with a warning from the continuum." She looked around the bridge, locking eyes with everyone. "Something is coming. We aren't sure when it will come, or what form it will take, but it will change the very course of life in this galaxy. Possibly for the better, but more likely for the worse."

"They have told me what they know about this threat Captain," Harry stated, "we will need to meet with Starfleet command to brief them on what the Q told me, and how we think they should prepare." He chuckled wryly. "We don't have all the answers, but what the Q have said to me is that what we discover here in the Delta quadrant on our mission will be of the utmost importance to what's coming."

"I will pop in from time to time to check up on you, my dear Captain Kathy," Q said, moving forward and reaching out with his hand to Janeway, stopped by Harry's arm. Harry shook his head, and mouthed "inappropriate" to him, to which he nodded to Harry, then Janeway, and disappeared in a diamond of light.

"Well Agent," Tuvok piped up, "Things certainly aren't boring with you on board."

The bridge devolved into laughter, to which Tuvok just looked confused.


	7. Chapter 7

"Now, really concentrate Kes." looking intently at the mirror, Kes frowned as her reflection stared back at her accusingly.

Harry and Quora shared a look at this, turning back as they sensed a change. The mirror's surface, which once showed the a glaring Kes and the interior of the lab instead showed the inside of engineering, complete with active warp core and people milling around.

Quora clapped, as Harry said "Well done! I honestly didn't expect you to get it so quickly. Enchanting an item to view one of the alternate realities you are connected to is an impressive feat."

He smiled, mirroring Kes and Quora. "Now, you've been studying the federation's historical database, correct?" Kes nodded, smiling widely.

"Remember the Iconians? Well we should be able to use roughly the same principals of travel they did, either through magic or technology, or possibly a mixture of both to be able to cross over to the other dimensions without having you carry us with you."

Quora squealed. "To see this is quite... Exciting Kes. Thank you." She said as she walked up to the mirror to take a closer look.

The engineering bay beyond the mirror was the same yet slightly different than theirs. Same room but slightly different configuration and personnel. The bustle of the officers was the same, seems Starfleet professionalism was the same in all dimensions.

"Fascinating. Are you able to tell us anything about this dimension Kes?" Quora asked, still staring in the mirror.

"Yes, this is the dimension I travel to the most. It's the closest one in causation and frequency to ours, and depending on something, I'm not sure what, is either ahead or behind us in time." She looked into the mirror, seeing Lieutenant Carey working at a console as B'elanna stood next to him, both discussing something intently.

"Their insignia is different." Quora pointed. "Look - B'elanna's is one for a field commision rather than her Starfleet ones from here. Why's that?" She frowned, looking at Kes.

"This dimension doesn't have wizards, and without certain wizarding events happening in the background the Federation gave up colonies to the Cardassians. This lead to a group called the Maquis, which people like B'elanna and Chakotay hail from in that dimension. In our dimension it's essentially the same crew who served on Chakotay's ship, but in Starfleet. I think the alternate Voyager's similarity is why this dimension is the easiest to penetrate into."

Harry nodded. "It's why certain things in their engineering look different from ours too - without the wizarding influence certain technologies ended up larger than ours, or totally different."

Quora stared back into the mirror thoughtfully. "You know, I thought this was going to be a boring assignment being with you two. I think you've just showed me how wrong I was."

"OK, so that's enough of that for now," Harry smiled, conjuring three comfortable leather chairs facing each other. He gestured towards them and they all took a seat. "I think it's high time we went over exactly why the continuum wants you here with Kes and I.

o~o~o

Kes and Harry both looked at Quora expectantly. "You need to start, love," Harry said gently.

"Damn. I was hoping I wouldn't have to say anything, that we would just let things happen but if I have to, then I have to."

She sighed, looking slowly at both of them.

"Well, the short of it is the continuum wants there to be a relationship between you, me and Kes." Kes's head whipped around to stare at Harry as Quora continued. "Obviously we need permission from you both, this is quite an unusual situation for us, the Q rarely have relationships outside our species."

Harry sighed, looking at Kes. "I heard this before the Q left Quora with me and dumped us back on board Voyager. I said to them that at a minimum that you would need to be asked." With that, he sat back in the chair.

Kes looked between Quora and Harry, a shocked look on her face before it morphed into a smile. "Well, I'm keen."

"What?" Quora spluttered, "Just like that?" She looked at Harry who also looked surprised.

"I know it might be hard for you to fathom Quora, but my species barely lives to the ripe old age of 10. It's only a few years until I undergo my elogium where I need to mate, but a lot of my species mate and form relationships earlier than that. I would have had something like that with Neelix, except for him being an irrationally jealous person. I also think it's a great honour to have the Q consider me worthy of being in a relationship with."

She smiled shyly, looking at Harry. "In my time here you have been nothing but patient and caring towards me Harry. I'd love to be with you too."

Harry nodded at this, looking thoughtfully at Kes. Quora smiled at Kes before looking at Harry expectantly.

Harry sighed as he looked Quora and Kes in their eyes. "Look, I don't know what the Q are expecting from this,but we will need some time to get to know you and each other before this can blossom into something great. Between Kes and I it's slightly different, we at least have a base of friendship to build off but there's still not much there really with you."

"What I am concerned about though is do the Q consider this arrangement permanent or temporary? What's the timeframe? Are we expected to birth offspring? Given what I and the other Q discussed there's some sort of danger coming, and this relationship will help save the galaxy?"

"No Harry, this will help save this entire reality."

o~o~o

"Concentrate Harry, just remember you need to force your way through."

"I'm bloody trying" he snapped, sweat on his brow. "It's too tight!"

"Just ram it in, here I'll help you," Quora said as she joined hands with Harry, the swirling portal stabilizing with her touch, its roiling white jagged outlines turning calm at her touch.

"Now," She said, waving her hand at the portal, causing it to disappear, "Again."

"You're a harsh taskmaster, Q." Harry said. "I seriously haven't had to work this hard in centuries for anything magical."

Kes, watching on the sidelines interjected "It's different from your or my normal magic Harry."

Harry sighed, "Yeah you're right of course." A determined look came over his face, and this time he waved his hand causing a white portal to tear a hole in the room's space.

"Good." Quora clapped, smiling. You've cracked the cornerstone of our powers. Everything from here on out should come easier now."

"Oh shit," Harry turned to Quora, "Is this the white flash that signals your travel?"

On Quora's nod he looked at the white portal, then back to her. A grin split his face as he snapped his fingers, disappearing in a diamond of white light and appearing behind Quora, grinning evilly.

Before anything could happen however a call came over the intercom. "Agent Potter, please report to Sick Bay."

Harry sighed, Quora having looked around at him as the call happened, giving him no chance to do anything to the Q.

He tapped on the comm badge, "On my way, Commander," and turned to leave. The door opened and he looked back, seeing Quora trying to get Kes to replicate his earlier feat. Smiling, he left the room.

o~o~o

In Sick Bay, The Doctor, Chakotay and Tuvok surrounded Ensign Seska's bed, who lay unconscious. A Kazon man lay in the main biobed.

Harry arrived, walking up to them, "You called, Commander?" he asked.

"That's right." Chakotay nodded, frowning. "We need to report to you that Ensign Seska is a Cardassian."

At Harry's raised eyebrows he elaborated. "She was assigned to my previous crew before I got assigned here, leading defensive operations in the Cardassian border zone. After we got rotated out and posted here instead she came as well."

"We looked through her academy transcripts as well as her previous medical records and found no indicators she was anything other than an exemplary Bajoran who decided to join Starfleet rather than the Bajoran Militia." Tuvok stated, looking at Harry.

"How did we find out then?" Harry asked, looking at the Doctor. "Joe, how did you find out about her being Cardassian?"

"Ensign Seska was injured in a firefight with the Kazon down on the planet, in the mouth of a cave. She took a blast meant for Chakotay. Thankfully the Kazon's weapons aren't as deadly as some of the other energy weapons we've come across, but she needed a lot of dermal regeneration, part of which is we need some level of blood transfusions, due to a reasonable amount of hers becoming for lack of a better word, cooked."

Harry, looking grim, said, "Go on, Doctor."

"Well, the standard medical scans are good in a pinch, but since we had time on our side I decided to run a full microcellular analysis of her blood in order to find a more perfect match, we have a number of Bajoran crew members who were possible matches based on the basic scans, but her medical records indicated a childhood illness called Orkett's disease, which she had received an extensive bone marrow transfusion from a Cardassian donor."

"Running these deeper scans showed that this was a lie. A few specific genetic markers showed she's Cardassian. She's had extensive blood work done in the past, however whatever work she had done that masked her race in her first series of medicals has become less of a defense for our current scanning procedures."

"Hmm." Harry sighed. "Well, that and all of your medical scanners are currently beyond most federation medical technology."

"True." Joe said, to raised eyebrows from Tuvok and Chakotay. To that he said, "Being in Section 31, and the newer, more cooperative collaboration has made this possible gentlemen. This ship has all sorts of new cutting edge technology."

Harry nodded, looking at Chakotay. "Thanks for bringing this to my attention Chakotay. As you know, I will need some privacy to begin interrogation in order to decide what to do here."

Tuvok frowned, "Agent, as ship's chief of security, I believe I should be here when you question her, ship's security has been violated here. I realize that according to the regulations you do not have to comply, but as was mentioned, Section 31 is increasingly cooperative in more areas than before. Logic dictates two interrogators are better than one, I may have questions for her which you may not think of." Having said his piece, Tuvok, face impassive as ever, waited.

Harry nodded. "You're right. OK. Tuvok will stay here, the rest of you need to leave, please." He looked at Chakotay. "Sorry Commander, but I will inform you of anything I can after the fact."

Chakotay nodded, putting a hand on Joe's back, both of them walking away to the Doctor's office.

"Commander." Harry called after him as he walked away. "You will forget about this portion of sick bay for a time, it's the privacy spell I'm using, so please don't be alarmed."

Chakotay nodded, a little smile showing before his face turned stony and he continued towards the Doc's office with the Doctor.

Harry looked at Tuvok, waving his hand. To the outside observer a portion of sick bay vanished, the room slightly shrinking as the space inside reduced by the area around Seska's bed.

From Tuvok's point of view everything went white and a ringing began in his ears as his body felt encased in pea soup.

"The interrogation chamber is by Seska's bed." Harry's words cut through the interference like a hot knife through the soup he was in as the world returned to normal.

Looking out, everything looked normal to Tuvok. He looked at Harry, who was calmly standing there looking at him.

"That was uncomfortable, Agent. What was that?" Tuvok frowned.

"That spell is a modified fidelius charm, short lasting and having the caster as the secret keeper rather than another, but really that's not important." He said, shaking his head. "The important thing is we are now in a pocket dimension, the edge of which is tethered to the normal world, but not part of it. It takes a section of space and shunts it into subspace where nothing but what the caster allows can pass through."

"We modified this spell a long time ago for scenarios like this. Nobody but you and I and Seska can hear or see anything in this area. I directed the secret towards just your and her minds so that if there are any electronic listening devices all they hear will be the buzzing you just heard."

"Anyway, enough explaining, I have a truth serum here we will be using." Pulling out a clear vial from a pocket, Seska's head raised by itself, her mouth opening and her tongue popping out for him to drip three drops onto it.

On the third drop, he put the flask away and waved his hand at her.

Nothing happened.

Tuvok raised one eyebrow at Harry, who shrugged, poking her in the side. Hard.

"GAAAH!" she screamed as she moved away from the probe, eyes opening in rage.

"Seska, hello." Harry said, looking intently at her. "Do you know why Tuvok and I are here?"

"Is it because of me making deals with the Kazon?" She said, her eyes widening dramatically after, hands going over her mouth.

Tuvok's second eyebrow joined his first.

"Why yes Ensign, that's one of the things we are going to talk about," A predatory grin appeared on his face as he started asking more questions.

o~o~o

"What do you mean, Cardassian spy? We screen for that for fuck's sake." The words came from the white-haired fair skinned woman on the viewscreen, lips pursed, her expression thunderous. A large, bald, dark skinned man behind her stood impassively, in a black uniform.

Harry's lab had, at present Harry himself, Chakotay, Tuvok, The Doctor, and the Captain, all standing around the large viewscreen embedded in the only side of the laboratory without any equipment.

"Yes admiral," The Doctor piped up, "Unfortunately it seems Cardassian biotech is a bit ahead of our old scanning methods. It was only the improved scanning technology on this ship that caught it, and even then only when running a microcellular scan."

"Nachev," The man's voice rumbled out, "We'll talk later about steps to prevent other incidents like this."

At this, she nodded, taking a deep breath, "Doctor, thank you for your expedient filing of your report, we've looked over it and it's proving beneficial to our plans to counter this new technique, and others like it."

A small smile appeared on the Doctor's face as he nodded at her and the man.

"Captain," Admiral Nachev said, "I don't need to impress on you the importance of your mission. From the get-go you and your crew have made great strides with expanding Federation interests, especially with the displacement technology coming from the meeting with the caretaker."

"Due to this recent development, you are ordered to come back to Federation space to take on additional operatives who will screen your crew and ensure your security. With what's happened with the Q and -"

The ship shuddered and klaxons and red emergency lighting cut off the Admiral.

Chakotay slammed his hand into his communicator, "Bridge, Report."

"Kim here sir, _something_ penetrated our shields, an unknown energy source. It's travelling towards Sick bay. Wait, hold that it's reached sick bay and turned back again."

The ship shuddered again, and Kim said, "It's out of our shield perimeter ma'am, and it's disappeared from sensors."

Harry and Janeway looked at each other. "Computer, locate Ensign Seska." Janeway said.

"Ensign Seska is not on board the ship." The calm female computer voice stated.

"New orders," Nachev's voice rang out. "Investigate this new phenomena as much as you can then come back to Federation space after you've resolved the Kazon situation with the stolen technology."

At the Captain's nod the screen went black.

"Right, Harry you investigate the kidnapping of Seska, are you able to get Quora's help into this?" She asked.

Harry scratched his beard. "I'm not sure. At this stage I still have no idea what sort of help the Q have actually agreed to give us. Considering their pretty dire warning I'd say we should get at least some help, I'll ask."

She nodded. "Commander, you coordinate the efforts to retrieve the technology and wipe the data banks of the Kazon ship. We need to minimise the impact of the Cardassians' interference in the delta quadrant."

"Tuvok," She looked at the Lieutenant Commander, his face impassive as always. "Go over all of the communication logs to see where the messages from Seska were sent to. Also start preparing for the incoming security personnel."

The four of them broke up, Harry walking towards the sensor console in the lab, while the other three walked out.

o~o~o

Dull green and white lighting reflected off the interior of the Kazon ship, as Carey and B'Elanna beamed on board the kazon ship. Three bodies were partially embedded in the walls and floor of the ship, covered in grey slag.

"OK, let's do this," B'Elanna said, both her and Carey tapping the buttons on the arm bracelets they wore. A small shield showed for a split second around each of them, and they walked forward, shields showing again as they hit a containment field in the center of the small bridge.

Approaching two separate consoles they started to work.

After a few moments, B'Elanna looked up from her work removing the replicator technology from the ship and looked at Carey. As if he sensed her gaze he looked up, hands still moving across the console.

"Lieutenant?" he raised an eyebrow.

"Did you ever see anything about Seska that made you suspicious?"

Carey looked at her for a moment, as if searching for something in her expression.

"No. She pulled the wool over all of our eyes."

"Hmm." B'Elanna frowned. "Something in me thinks I should have spotted it. I served with her and Chakotay on the Val Jean out on the Cardassian border. Our crew got folded in with others to make this one. I served out there for three years, and never noticed anything that made me question who Seska was."

She looked intently at Carey. "She hated the Cardassians. I knew it, everyone knew it. She wore the occupation and her hatred of it on her sleeve." Her fist slammed down on the replicator, shield flaring as it impacted the device. "Urwl petaQ, how didn't I see it?" she growled.

"I read the preliminary report B'Elanna. She was an operative for a lot longer than she was in Starfleet. Trained from a young age to infiltrate. Extensive genetic modifications. Dropped in locally to get real world experience before being snuck out to attend the academy. This wasn't an amateur operation." Carey said earnestly.

B'Elanna sighed. "Thanks for that, I guess it's really bothering me."

A few minutes passed as they worked in more comfortable silence than before, when the silence was cut by the sound of the replicator detaching as B'Elanna lifted it out of the housing it was placed in.

Placing it on the floor she turned to Carey.

"All finished here," He said as she turned to him, his hands hitting the final sequence on the console. The lighting in the cabin dropped, emergency lighting taking the place of the main lighting that was on before. The shield they both walked through flickered and deactivated and the temperature noticeably dropped as the computers regulating environmental controls deactivated.

B'Elanna's hand tapped her comm badge as with her other hand she hefted the replicator under one arm. "Voyager, two to beam up."

A blue glow lit the inside of the ship, fading as they beamed out.

o~o~o

On the bridge, the Captain was looking at reports, while around her the officers were doing their duties. She was reading a report about the interrogation of Seska, and the secrets she revealed. She tapped to go to the next page, when she jumped, just catching the padd before it fell as the klaxons of the red alert sounded.

As the bridge was drowned in red light, she stood up and shouted, "Report!"

"Captain, a massive ship has dropped out of warp on the starboard bow." Kim said.

"Shields up. On Screen."

The viewscreen changed view from the small Kazon ship, showing a massive Kazon ship. On the viewport, measurements showed the size, it easily dwarfing Voyager many times.

"Tuvok, what's the status of their weapons?"

"Online and charged, Captain, but they haven't fired upon us."

"Ma'am," Kim interrupted, "We're being hailed."

"On Screen."

The viewscreen lit up, rust colored insides of the ship behind a Kazon man with a stern, angular face.

"I am Maje Culluh from the Kazon-Nistrim sect. State your reasons for boarding our shuttle."

"I am Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation starship Voyager. We assisted your people who sent out a distress call. All but one of them died, the cause of which was a stolen piece of technology. Your member who survived is in our Sick Bay."

"You're in charge? A woman?" Culluh looked off screen and laughed, the sound of others joining him. "You," he said, pointing at Chakotay, "You should put your woman in her place. Our scout ship was given this technology freely, it was not stolen."

"I'm the leader here, Mage, you will address me." She said firmly, stepping forward. "The technology was stolen, by one of our crew members against our will. We have removed it from your ship."

"You dare!" Culluh screamed out.

The screen went black, and the massive ship opened fire. Voyager shook as she took the initial hits.

"Report." Janeway ordered, looking at Tuvok.

"Shields holding, Captain. No loss in shield integrity."

As the ship shook lightly, the Captain turned to Chakotay. "Recommendations, Commander?" She asked. "I'm not sure if we want to perform a show of force here, these Kazon seem unstable enough to want to pursue us if we defeat them easily."

Chakotay paused for a moment. "I think we have little choice. I recommend we destroy their weapon systems, drop shields, and beam their crewman to their shuttle. Then we can re-raise shields and retreat at our own leisure."

Janeway looked at Chakotay, who raised an eyebrow. "A most logical course of action, I would agree with it, Captain."

"Make it so, Gentlemen."

The next minute passed as they did that. Voyager lashed out at the Kazon ship, hitting a precise pattern on the front and sides of the ship, as she moved around. Minute explosions rang out as they disabled the weapons on the enemy ship.

After this, the shields were dropped, and the Kazon crew member was beamed over to the shuttle.

Once this happened, Voyager reraised its shields and hailed the Kazon ship.

On screen once more, Culluh looked even more angry, gritting his teeth in impotent rage.

"Mage," Janeway got out, smiling softly. "Your crew member has been returned to your shuttle. I suggest you leave this area with it. You've seen what we are capable of."

"You will pay for this, woman." Culluh bit out. He then grinned madly, and the viewscreen went blank.

At this, all around Voyager Kazon warships dropped out of warp, immediately opening fire.

"Report!" Janeway yelled as the ship roiled around from the hits.

"Shields holding Captain. We should be down to less than that, but something's reinforcing them from inside the ship."

"Evasive maneuvers, Mr Paris, Tuvok - start returning fire. Kim, investigate the cause of the shield reinforcement."

The ship started ducking and weaving around the Kazon ships. Phaser shots took out precise points on their ships.

"Captain, when the Kazon dropped out of warp, something increased the efficiency of the shield and power systems. We're operating at many times effective power." Kim said.

The comm system crackled to life. "Harry to the Bridge. I've bought online some Section 31 surprises. I hope you like them."

"Thanks for the early Christmas present Agent." Janeway said, settling into her chair.

After a short amount of minutes all Kazon ships were disabled, their weapon systems destroyed. A few ships had scattered, escaping, and one ship exploded, one of their reactors being too close to their weapon systems.

Voyager settled into space a distance away from the Kazon ships, the bridge crew marvelling at how many ships they'd managed to take out.

"Janeway to Potter. Have you finished your scans on the area, about how Seska was taken?"

"Affirmative Captain. We can leave now if you'd like. I'll need to go over the sensor data with you and some people from Section 31 once we get back to the alpha quadrant."

"Roger that, Janeway out. Tom, take us to the nearest displacement station, maximum warp. Once there, take us to the rendezvous point in the alpha quadrant."

"We're going home."


End file.
